Crossing the Chasm
When I first picked up Crossing the Chasm, I thought I was just catching up on a Silicon Valley classic from the '90s. But the more I read, the more it felt like a roadmap for every product that gets stuck after its early wins — and a warning for those of us just starting to figure out how go-to-market really works.
This post isn’t a summary — it’s a breakdown of what I learned and what I’m still thinking through. Especially as someone earlier in the game, trying to understand why traction often plateaus just when things seem to be working.
The Chasm: The Quiet Drop-off Between “Cool” and “Credible”
Moore outlines five phases in the tech adoption curve:
Innovators → Early Adopters → ⚠️ THE CHASM ⚠️ → Early Majority → Late Majority → Laggards
The “chasm” sits between early adopters (who love being first) and the early majority (who hate being first).
Here’s the catch:
Early adopters are forgiving. They love new, shiny, even broken.
The early majority wants stability, support, and a clear ROI.
What worked to get your first 1,000 users won’t work to get your first 100K. Same product, totally different psychology. And that’s the part most startups underestimate.
Why the Chasm Is So Dangerous
One thing Moore nails is the illusion of momentum.
You get some early users. You see retention. A few tweets go viral. Maybe even a TechCrunch feature. It feels like things are clicking. But underneath, something’s shifting:
The people coming next aren’t like your early fans.
They don’t care that you’re new. They want to know if you’re proven.
And they don’t want to figure it out — they want it to just work.
This is the moment when growth starts to feel harder, not easier. Not because the product got worse — but because the audience changed, and the startup didn’t.
What It Takes to Actually Cross the Chasm
Moore offers a playbook that feels even more relevant today:
• Focus on a beachhead, not the masses
Don’t try to win everyone at once. Find one tight, high-need segment of the early majority — where your product solves an urgent problem — and go all in.
• Build the full experience
For early adopters, an MVP is fine. For the mainstream, it’s not. You need onboarding, support, integrations — the whole ecosystem that wraps around your core product.
• Change the story
Early adopters buy into what could be. The mainstream wants what already works. So your messaging has to shift — less about innovation, more about outcomes.
• Show proof, not potential
Testimonials, case studies, ROI numbers — these matter way more than a vision deck when selling to pragmatists.
• Dominate before you expand
Winning one segment earns the right to move to the next. Trying to go horizontal too soon just spreads you thin and exposes gaps.
• Shift how you sell
Your early pitch was about being “the future.” Now it needs to be about risk reduction, cost savings, and proven results.
What I’m Still Thinking About
Reading Crossing the Chasm made me realize how much go-to-market is about timing and psychology. And that most products don’t fail because they’re bad — they fail because the team didn’t adapt when the market changed.
It also made me wonder:
How do you know when you’re in the chasm?
What does “winning a niche” really look like — and how narrow is too narrow?
What kind of marketing and product decisions signal to the mainstream that you’re safe to trust?
These are questions I don’t have full answers to yet. But having this framework in mind already helps me spot which stage a startup is in — and what kind of playbook they might need next.
Conclusion
The biggest myth in tech is that once you hit product-market fit, you can just scale. Crossing the Chasm breaks that myth.
Product-market fit isn’t a moment — it’s a moving target. And if you’re not evolving your product, your message, and your strategy as you move through the adoption curve, you’ll stall — right when it looks like you’re winning.
