AI Era: ICP vs IMP
The next billion users may not be human.
Small Beginnings
Today’s machines originate from humble beginnings.
From the invention of the wheel and axle in ancient Mesopotamia to the automata of the Islamic Golden Age, humans have spent thousands of years building machines to solve problems. Simple devices allowed civilizations to build structures far more impressive than the tools themselves.
Visionaries such as Leonardo da Vinci imagined technologies beyond the constraints of their time. The Industrial Revolution ushered in a wave of machines never before seen and propelled the world into the modern era.
The bond between them all is human ingenuity.
Machines are designed to increase human productivity, decrease manual labor, and solve human problems.
Machine World
Today, we live in a world increasingly shaped by machines.
Arizona alone has become a global hub for semiconductors, fueled by ~$300B investment from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). NVIDIA’s chips power the AI revolution. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and OpenAI are investing billions in data centers and compute. Waymo vehicles drive the streets of Phoenix without drivers, while humanoid robots are beginning to enter factories and warehouses.
For thousands of years, humans built machines.
For most of that history, machines were tools.
Today, machines are becoming participants.
ICP vs IMP
As machines take on more responsibility, founders may need to think beyond the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and begin considering their Ideal Machine Profile (IMP).
As a venture capitalist, I often ask founders:
Do you know your customer by name?
Do you know their title?
Do you understand their problems?
Do they know they have a problem?
Do they care enough to solve it?
Do they have the resources to solve their problem?
These questions have served founders well for decades.
But in 2026 and the AI Era, the conversation is beginning to change.
Businesses are increasingly being built not only for people, but for machines.
What happens when your customer is an AI agent?
What happens when a machine discovers your product, evaluates your pricing, and completes a transaction without a human ever touching the keyboard?
What happens when machines become economic participants?
I believe we need a new framework.
New Nomenclature & Questions
Some possible new nomenclature in the AI Era:
Ideal Agent Profile (IAP)
Ideal Customer Agent (ICA)
Ideal Machine Profile (IMP)
Ideal System Profile (ISP)
Some possible new questions in the AI Era:
Which machines will discover your product?
Which machines will use your product?
Can a machine understand your pricing?
Is your product machine-readable?
Can an agent transact autonomously?
What permissions does a machine need to act on a user’s behalf?
Which machines are most likely to “hire” your product?
The next generation of companies won’t just optimize for human experience.
They will optimize for machine experience.
We spent thousands of years building machines to serve humans.
The next decade may be defined by machines choosing which products, services, and companies succeed.
The question is no longer, “Who is your customer?”
The question is, “Which machine chooses you?”
Because the next billion users may not be human.