Comments on: The Danger of Letting Early Adopters Influence Product Development

By: Tom Gibson - Creating Outstanding Customer Value

Tom Gibson - Creating Outstanding Customer Value — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:23:49 +0000

[...] Read Aaron’s post —> The Danger of Letting Early Adopters Influence Product Development [...]

By: Aaronontheweb

Aaronontheweb — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:52:15 +0000

Hey Tom,

I’m glad that you liked this post – it’s an issue that my company still deals with constantly even though we’re not “young” in terms of years. We are still young in terms of Moore’s Chasm, however and this advice is based on our empirical experience.

We’re happy to have early adopters, but now that we’re gaining ground among the early majority we’re having to reject the input of early adopters more and more frequently. It’s hard to do, but ultimately necessary in order to achieve growth.

By: Tom Gibson

Tom Gibson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:31:02 +0000

Nicely done Aaron.

You do a very good job of describing this problem in a way that would make sense to early-stage product developers.

I was talking about this issue with a VC at coffee this morning, and now I can point people to your piece.

Thanks. Tom @tomwgibson

By: Hey, Dude, You Aren’t Like Our Target Market and Stuff | Marketing Ninja

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:35:32 +0000

[...] find that a lot of web-based startups, particularly those driven mostly by early adopter feedback, fall victim to trying to please everybody. You can’t, and you shouldn’t. You have to [...]