Your early customers love your product. Usage is strong. Retention is excellent. You've proven product-market fit with innovators and early adopters. You're ready to scale.
Then growth stalls. New customer acquisition slows. The prospects who valued your innovation stop responding. The next wave of customers seems to need something different. Your early go-to-market strategy suddenly stops working.
You've hit the chasm.
Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" framework explains why most disruptive products fail to reach mainstream markets and provides a systematic approach to bridge that gap.
The Technology Adoption Lifecycle
Moore's framework starts with the technology adoption lifecycle, which segments customers into five groups based on how they adopt new products.
Innovators (2.5% of market): Technology enthusiasts who want to be first. They'll tolerate bugs, missing features, and complexity because they value novelty and being on the cutting edge.
Early Adopters (13.5%): Visionaries who see competitive advantage in new approaches. They'll invest in unproven products if they believe it gives them strategic differentiation. They're willing to work with vendors to shape products.
Early Majority (34%): Pragmatists who want proven solutions. They need references, established vendors, and evidence that products work. They value practical benefits over innovation.
Late Majority (34%): Conservatives who are skeptical of new approaches. They adopt only when products become standard and not adopting creates disadvantage.
Laggards (16%): Skeptics who resist change. They adopt only when forced by market pressure or regulation.
Most product marketers understand this lifecycle. What they miss is the chasm.
The Chasm Between Early Adopters and Early Majority
The chasm is the gap between early adopters and the early majority. It's where most disruptive products die.
Early adopters and early majority customers have fundamentally different buying criteria:
Early adopters buy change. They want innovation, competitive advantage, and strategic differentiation. They'll tolerate immature products because the strategic value outweighs the risk. They don't need extensive proof or references because they see themselves as pioneers.
Early majority buy improvement. They want proven solutions, minimal risk, and references from companies like theirs. They're not interested in innovation for its own sake—they want practical benefits with predictable results.
The chasm exists because early adopters can't serve as references for the early majority. When a pragmatist hears that a visionary early adopter is using your product, their reaction isn't "I should use this too." It's "That's interesting, but we're not crazy like them."
Why Traditional Marketing Fails at the Chasm
Your early success created a playbook: emphasize innovation, highlight competitive advantage, focus on vision, and sell to risk-tolerant visionaries.
That playbook fails with the early majority because they have different motivations:
- They don't want to be first; they want to be safe
- They don't care about your vision; they care about practical results
- They won't tolerate missing features or bugs
- They need proof from companies similar to them
- They expect whole product solutions, not point solutions
Most companies try to cross the chasm by doing more of what worked early on—more marketing, more sales reps, more features. This fails because the problem isn't volume. It's strategy.
The Bowling Pin Strategy
Moore's solution: pick one specific segment, dominate it completely, then use that as a beachhead to expand into adjacent segments.
Instead of trying to win the entire early majority market simultaneously, focus on winning one niche completely. This segment becomes your bowling pin—knock it down, then use the momentum to knock down the next pin.
The bowling pin strategy works because:
Pragmatists buy from market leaders. Within a specific niche, you can credibly claim leadership even if you're small overall.
References work when they're similar. A healthcare company will trust references from other healthcare companies, not from generic "successful companies."
Whole product requirements are segment-specific. Different industries need different integrations, compliance features, and workflows. Serving one segment well is achievable. Serving all segments well simultaneously is not.
Segment leadership creates competitive moats. Once you dominate a niche, competitors struggle to displace you because you have all the reference customers, partnerships, and segment-specific capabilities.
How to Choose Your Beachhead Segment
Not all segments are equally good bowling pins. Choose based on these criteria:
Target customers have urgent, pervasive pain: The problem you solve must be critical, not nice-to-have. Pragmatists won't buy vitamins; they buy painkillers.
The segment can be dominated with available resources: Choose a segment small enough that you can win all the deals, not just some deals. Better to own 60% of a $20M segment than 3% of a $500M segment.
The segment is accessible: You need to reach these customers through channels you can afford. If the segment requires a field sales force you can't fund, it's the wrong segment.
The segment has compelling word-of-mouth potential: Customers in this segment should talk to each other. Industry associations, conferences, and peer networks make this possible.
The segment can serve as a reference for adjacent segments: Your first segment should be strategically positioned to expand. Winning healthcare providers should help you win payers. Winning retail should help you win e-commerce.
Building the Whole Product
Early adopters tolerate incomplete products. Early majority customers expect whole product solutions—everything required to achieve their desired outcome.
The whole product includes:
Core product: The thing you actually sell and deliver.
Expected product: Additional items customers assume come with the purchase—training, support, documentation.
Augmented product: Integration with other tools, professional services, customization.
Potential product: Future capabilities and growth paths.
For early adopters, shipping the core product is enough. For the early majority, you need the whole product or they won't buy.
This doesn't mean you must build everything yourself. Partner ecosystem, integrations, third-party services, and professional services can fill gaps. The customer just needs to know the complete solution exists.
Positioning and Messaging for Chasm Crossing
Your positioning must change when crossing the chasm.
Early adopter positioning: "Revolutionary new approach that gives visionaries competitive advantage through disruptive innovation."
Early majority positioning: "Proven solution that helps [specific segment] achieve [specific outcome] with minimal risk, validated by [reference customers in segment]."
Notice the differences:
- Revolutionary → Proven
- Visionaries → [Specific segment]
- Competitive advantage → [Specific outcome]
- Disruptive innovation → Minimal risk
Your messaging should emphasize:
- Segment-specific results
- Reference customers in that segment
- Practical benefits, not innovation
- Risk mitigation
- Whole product completeness
Go-to-Market Strategy Changes
Crossing the chasm requires operational changes across sales, marketing, and product.
Sales: Hire reps with experience selling to your target segment. They need credibility with that buyer, not just general sales skills. Focus them exclusively on the beachhead segment.
Marketing: Create segment-specific content, case studies, and campaigns. Attend segment conferences. Build relationships with segment influencers. Stop generic "thought leadership" and focus on segment problems.
Product: Build the segment-specific features required for whole product completeness. This might mean compliance features, specific integrations, or workflow customization that only matters to this segment.
Partnerships: Find partners who serve your target segment. Co-marketing, integrations, and referral partnerships accelerate segment penetration.
Customer success: Ensure customers achieve the promised outcomes. Pragmatists buy based on references. Unhappy customers in your beachhead segment kill your chasm crossing.
After Crossing the Chasm
Once you dominate your beachhead segment, expand to adjacent segments using the same approach.
Your second segment should be similar enough to your first that:
- Your reference customers are credible
- Your product requires minimal changes
- Your go-to-market approach is similar
Each new segment builds on the previous one. Over time, you assemble portfolio of dominated segments that collectively represent a large market.
Common Mistakes When Crossing the Chasm
Choosing too broad a segment: "Mid-market companies" isn't a segment. "Regional banks with $500M-$2B in assets" is a segment.
Trying to serve multiple segments simultaneously: This dilutes resources and prevents dominating any single segment. Focus on one until you clearly win it.
Hiring too fast: Companies extrapolate early growth rates and staff up before crossing the chasm. This creates burn that outpaces revenue growth when you hit the chasm.
Keeping early adopter positioning: "Innovative" and "disruptive" scare pragmatists. They want "proven" and "safe."
Shipping incomplete whole products: Pragmatists won't buy if the solution has gaps. Either build it, partner for it, or choose a segment with different whole product requirements.
When to Use This Framework
Use Crossing the Chasm when:
- You have early traction but growth is stalling
- You're selling disruptive or novel products
- Your current customers are innovators/early adopters
- You need to reach mainstream markets
- Sales cycles are lengthening and win rates dropping
This framework is less relevant for:
- Incremental improvements to existing categories
- Products targeting only early adopters
- Markets where the majority has already adopted similar solutions
Crossing the chasm is hard. Most products fail at this stage. But understanding the dynamics—why early majority customers buy differently, why you need segment focus, why whole product matters—gives you a systematic path forward.
Pick your beachhead. Build the whole product. Dominate that segment. Then expand. That's how disruptive products reach mainstream markets.