ICP for agtech: the 5 questions most founders skip

Most ICP exercises in agtech end with a sentence like "mid-sized European farms interested in sustainability." That is not an ICP. That is a wish.

A real ICP for agriculture has to absorb three things that don't show up in B2B SaaS frameworks: long capex cycles, the cooperative buyer, and the seasonality of the decision window. Skip those and you're building a sales motion for a customer who doesn't exist.

Here are the five questions I run every founder through.

1. Who actually signs the cheque?

In agriculture, the operator, the owner, the agronomist, and the cooperative buyer are often four different people. The operator likes your product. The owner controls budget. The agronomist gates trust. The cooperative writes the contract. If your sales motion is built around the operator alone, you will lose every deal at the last stage.

2. What was the customer doing twelve months ago?

The buying decision rarely starts when the demo starts. It starts when something broke — a yield collapse, a regulation, a price shock, a generational handover. If you can name the trigger, you can find the next ten customers. If you can't, you're cold-pitching.

3. What is the alternative to buying you — including doing nothing?

"Doing nothing" is the most common competitor in agtech and the one founders forget to study. If the cost of inaction is fuzzy, your deal will sit in pipeline forever. Quantify the status quo's cost in euros per hectare, per cow, per season. Make it visible.

4. Where in the calendar is this decision made?

Agriculture has a decision window. Equipment is bought in winter. Inputs are committed before sowing. Cooperatives plan annual contracts in Q3. If your outbound hits in the wrong month, your conversion rate halves regardless of how good the product is. Map the customer's year, not yours.

5. What proof would make this customer's peers buy?

Farmers buy from each other. The reference customer is not a marketing asset — it is the entire growth engine. The first ten customers should be chosen for their ability to convince the next hundred, not for the size of their cheque.

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Run the five questions. If three of them return "I'm not sure," you don't have an ICP yet — you have a target. The Strategy Call is where we turn the second into the first.