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Startup Adoption Behaviour ↓

All companies started with few paying customers. Your innovators are the absolute nerds and evangelists in your space, but they are not comparable to the majority of the market. This Adoption Behaviour illustration was originally coined by Ohio State professor Everett Rogers in 1962 and still makes a case for startups nowadays to overindex on acquring early adopters. You can identify these a couple of ways:
‣ They are trying to solve a top 3 top of mind challenge in their life.
‣ They “pull it out of your hands” because they need it so much.
‣ They are willing to spend time & money on an 80% solution.

If these 3x descriptors are not the case, they are likely not your early adopters and you need to keep on looking. To make identifying early adopters easy, there is something called the SPA Treatment, which will help you prioritise your potential customer segments and early adopters to know which to tackle first, next & later. By identiying the size of the market, the price they are are willing to pay and the accessibility of said customer segment to yourself, you will get get a good feeling of who you should target and speak to first.