Finding Your Ideal Buyer: Persona Design with Frank Schneider

​In this tactical workshop, Entrepreneur in Residence Frank Schneider guided founders through a practical approach to designing buyer personas that actually lead to traction. He broke down why most early personas fail and introduced a lean, testable framework focused on solving urgent problems for real users.

​About Frank Schneider:

​Frank is a seasoned entrepreneur, GTM strategist, and AI evangelist. As the co-founder and CEO of Speakeasy AI, he bootstrapped the company from idea to successful acquisition by Verint Systems, securing a patent, a Fortune 500 lighthouse client, and recognition from Forrester along the way. He’s built and led high-performing sales, marketing, and customer success teams, closed multimillion-dollar enterprise deals, and advised founders across B2B, SaaS, and AI ventures. At Verint, Frank now operates at the intersection of AI, GTM strategy, and digital transformation. He also mentors startups through PeakSpan Ventures and supports M&A evaluations and strategic coaching.

​Key Concepts Covered:

​• Why generic buyer personas often miss the mark

​• How to identify “must-have” users—the ones who truly need your solution

​• Applying Matt Lerner’s Growth Lens to create lean, testable personas

​• How to tie persona insights to actionable GTM strategies

​• Running early customer discovery with urgency and structure

​Founders left with a defined persona, an initial GTM hypothesis, and next steps to validate their assumptions.