There’s this quote that says “if you build it they would come” - except that it’s not always true. If you are hardcore tech background, you may have used this quote, and lived by it. I had it as my status for a few years. So why isn’t it always true?

One of my favorite business-building books is Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore on how to bring a high-tech product to the mainstream market.

The biggest takeaway is to understand that at different stages of your product, you will have different types of users.

The ‘first adopter’ stage, was when #[0] started Nostr (2 years back) - the users were people like #[1] , #[2], and #[3]. They are the 2.5% of the population. But it needed something extra to take it to the next stage. First adopter #[4] came along.

This took us to the ‘early adopter’ stage - where we are, right now. The users here are more adaptive to change and provide detailed feedback. You’ll see more builders like #[5], #[6] , #[7] building tools, and use cases. Market segments are created here for example, elaborate communication platforms with zap and trends, GitHub, commerce, crowdfunding, etc.

This is also the part where the chasm is. You will see the hype and slow down, on repeat.

The market segments built at the ‘early adopter’ stage will attract a smaller crowd at the ‘early majority’ stage. Through these folks, it will start spreading through peer influence, etc. Once the influencers get on board, boom. It explodes. Influencers can be anybody ie market leaders, cross-marketing, media, celebrities, individuals with large followings, country leaders, etc

At the ‘early-majority’ stage though, the user output will take precedence over technology building. Users here want more stable tech.

According to this book, at the intersection between early and late majority is when you break even and market share will grow exponentially.

This book is pretty old, so feel free to adapt its essence to current times. But the basic idea is to paint a picture of this growth journey,

I think what’s important at this stage is building tools and use cases for various market segments and getting a smaller ‘early majority’ crowd in, to start using it.

There were questions about when the next user adoption will be. There are probably going to be many small user adoptions in various market segments, in the next following weeks, months we don’t know. All I know is that, once we have passed this stage, we are never gonna get it back. So enjoy the journey!