Step-by-Step Instructions

Click to print worksheet.

In this exercise you'll discover the path to huge success, is paved with tiny, targeted, customer segments.

Problems it Solves

1. You'll identify one potential problem to solve extremely well, instead of several problems you solve in a mediocre way.
2. When you speak with a customer, you'll know instantly whether they're ready to be one of your first customers.
3. You'll discover where to find your first customers.

When you think of "Early Adopters", who comes to mind? The folks sleeping outside the Apple Store waiting for the new iPhone, or maybe your first few customers that you won over by chance.

Early Adopters are your most important customer segments.

It's imperative you know who yours are, and where to find them.

Your Early Adopters

Print out the Your Early Adopters worksheet.

If you've read Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, or are familiar with the Diffusion of Innovations, the top half of the worksheet will look familiar, but the bottom half will be new.

If you're not familiar with the curve, no worries, this will get you caught up:

• Early Adopters: the first people willing to try your product or service. There are a few of these people, but they are vitally important to the success of your business. These people are so hungry for a solution to their problem they're willing to try anything...including your unproven product.
• Early Majority: this is the larger influx of people who will make your product a success. These people have a problem you can solve, but they're not desperate for a solution like the Early Adopters. They'll need some convincing (by an Early Adopter) before they're willing to try your product.
• Late Majority: just behind the Early Majority, the next wave of customers will sustain your business over time.These people have a problem, but they don't know it. They need to be educated that they have a problem before they'll become your customer.
• Laggards: this group is generally not interested in your offering, or may join the party very, very late in the game. Typically they don't even have a problem, so they'll only reluctantly become your customer.

We'll go over examples of all of these, but in summary, here's what you need to know:

Your victory will come from winning over the Early Majority.

The Early Majority is the big group of customers that will drive you toward your victory, but in order to get Early Majority you need one thing...Early Adopters.

Early Adopters will lead to Early Majority.  The Early Majority, the group that will eventually make all your dreams come true, isn’t experiencing a problem so severe that they are looking for a solution. They need someone to lead the way, someone they trust to tell them about your solution...

To win your Early Majority, you must win your Early Adopters.

The Adoption Behavior Curve will tell you which customers are most likely to be your Early Adopters, so you know where to focus your energy.

Let’s take a closer look at how to do this.

Step 1

Shade in the part of the curve that says “Early Majority” and draw an arrow pointing to it labeled, "Success."

These are the customers who will make up the majority of your sales, the customers that will make your victory a reality.

But to get there, you need to first target the Early Adopters.  This is a small, but powerful and necessary, subsegment of your customers.

Step 2

Draw an arrow pointing to the far left of the curve and write in "START." This is the group you'll target to get your product off the ground.

You will find your Early Majority by targeting your Early Adopters.

Step 3

Choose one of the segments you circled from the previous Customer Storming & Role-izing exercise. Write it in the blank provided.

Eventually you'll do this with each segment, so it doesn't matter which you start with.  For this exercise, I am choosing startup founders as my starting segment.

Step 4

Write in the problem you hypothesize they have in the space provided.

In my example, I’ve hypothesized founders experience the problem that they'd describe as “I'm not sure how to apply Lean Startup."

Note: it's critical you state your customer's problem in their words - not yours.

Step 5

To understand the difference between each of the customer subsegments (e.g. Early Adopters vs Early Majority vs etc.), you want to assess...

...their relationship to the hypothesized problem.

For each customer group (e.g. column), you'll ask yourself:

• Do they have the problem?
• Do they know they have the problem?
• Are they "paying" to solve the problem?

Note: "paying" to solve the problem means that this customer is already giving someone else the thing you need to achieve your victory. That thing could of course be money, it could be usage (e.g. ad-supported models, marketplaces, etc.), or it could be content (e.g. review sites, etc.).

After that, you'll identify behaviors that will tell you whether a given customer falls into that subsegment:

• How would someone act if they literally didn't have the problem?
• What would they do if they had a problem, but didn't know they had a problem?
• How would they act if they had the problem, knew they had the problem, but weren't "paying" to solve it?
• And what kinds of things would they do if they were already "paying" to solve the problem?

That's all a little abstract, so let's get concrete with some examples.

First, look at the Laggards column.  Laggards are people who are part of your customer segment (e.g. startup founders), but do not have the problem you hypothesized (e.g. "not sure how to apply Lean Startup").

Laggards:

• Do not have a problem
• Do not know they have a problem
• Are not actively trying to solve the problem

On your worksheet, put an 'X' in response to all three of questions about their relationship to the problem.

This can be a tricky concept to wrap your head around...who is in a customer segment, but doesn't experience the problem you hypothesize?

We'll cover this in more detail below, but for example, some startup founders have never heard of Lean Startup, some have already found their Product-Market Fit are worried about a different set of problems, and some founders simply don't subscribe to Lean Startup principles.

In these scenarios, we have someone who is actively not trying to solve the problem we hypothesize, so we consider them laggards.

Step 6

Look at the Late Majority section.  These are people who have the problem but do not know they have the problem and aren’t trying to solve it.

Place a check in the first box – they have the problem – and an X in second two boxes.

Within my example, this group includes founders who have some exposure to Lean Startup, and who may even consider what they're doing as "building an MVP", but they're perfectly content with the way things are going and certainly aren't looking for a solution to the "How do I apply Lean Startup" problem.

Step 7

Write in the behaviors you might observe for the subsegment of customers.

In my example, behaviors of someone who I know will struggle with Lean Startup, but who won't know herself are:

• Just started to read the Lean Startup book
• Recently filled out a Business Model Canvas
• Trying to find a dev team to build her "MVP"

If you've ever felt like you need to educate your customers about the problem they have (because you can see it, but they can't) you've found a classic example of Late Majority.

You want to avoid this group of people too because it will be impossibly difficult to get their attention.

No one is looking for a solution to a problem they don't know they have.

Even if you do get their attention, you'll spend all of your time convincing them they have a problem instead of solving it.

Step 8

Your Early Majority are the folks who have the problem, know they have the problem, but are not actively trying to solve it...yet.

Eventually, you'll have more of these customers than any other, they just aren't experiencing enough pain to seek out a solution yet.

Place a check in the first two boxes – they have the problem and they know they have it – but an X in the third (they aren't trying to solve it).

In my example, these are the people who are bought into Lean Startup, recognize it's not obvious how to apply it, but haven't taken steps to "pay" for a solution to that problem.

Step 9

Write in the externally observable behaviors that tell you someone is in your Early Majority.

What are some behaviors that tell me a founder might be my Early Majority?

• Takes free Lean courses online
• Goes to local Lean meetups
• Asks questions on Quora

Eventually you'll target this group heavily, but only after you have Early Adopters. Until you have those, this group of people won't trust your solution enough to buy it.

Since the Early Majority are not yet actively looking for a solution, you need to find the folks who will pave the way and show the Early Majority how awesome your product is.

That's the definition of Early Adopters.

Step 10

Your Early Adopters are the people who have the problem, know they have the problem, and are actively trying to find a solution.  Put a check in all three boxes.

People in this category are already trying to find a solution. If you can help them to find a solution they are already looking for, they are going to adopt your technology early on.

To Early Adopters, you aren't a startup...you're a savior.

Early adopters are desperate for a better way to solve their problems.

Step 11

Write in the behaviors that tell you a person within your segment is an early adopter: they're "paying" for a solution to the problem you hypothesized.

What are the behaviors I will see in my Early Adopter group?

• Go to a Lean Startup Machine event
• Pay for online courses at places like Udemy, Udacity, etc.
• Goes to the Lean Startup Conference
• Make calls on Clarity
• Buy Ash Muara's book, Running Lean
• Enrolls in Founder Institute

All of these actions require "payment" of the currency that I need to achieve my victory. In my case, that currency is actual cash.

Each of these behaviors tell me that this customer is looking for a solution to their problem now, so they're the most important set of behaviors we can list. Be sure to write down as many as you can.

Step 12

Next, you need to convert the behaviors you've listed into Externally Observable Behaviors.

Why? Because unless the behaviors your customers are taking to solve their problems are "Externally Observable" (i.e. you can see that they're doing them), you'll never be able to find them.

In my example, I don't have access to Lean Startup Machine's customer list, so it doesn't do me any good if people are attending their events, I don't have access to those people.

What I do have access to, are people who talk about their Lean Startup Machine experience on social media. If someone attends an LSM event, and then performs an "Externally Observable Behavior" like tweeting about it, all of a sudden, I know where to find that person.

This step is crucial because a list of behaviors alone is useless - there's no action to take. It's only when you convert the behaviors your Early Adopters take into "Externally Observable Behaviors" will you know where to find them.

As you can see, I had to convert every behavior I wrote down into an action I could observe as an outsider (e.g. wrote a review about the online course they paid for, left feedback for a founder on Clarity, joined a meetup group, etc.)

Once you complete this step, you'll not only have identified who your potential Early Adopters are, you'll have taken a huge step towards finding them.

Step 13

Using the additional pages of this worksheet, complete this exercise for all of the 3 - 5 segments you identified in your Customer Storming & Role-izing exercise.

What’s Next?

At this point you have defined your Early Adopters: your customers who have the problem you want to solve, who know they have the problem, and who are actively trying to solve it.

Now, where do you find these all important customers?

You find your Early Adopters by leveraging their Externally Observable Behaviors.

If you look at mine, the answer to where I'm are going to find these people pop right out:

• Tweets that mention Lean Startup Machine
• Reviews of online Lean courses
• Feedback of Lean Startup mentors on Clarity
• Amazon reviews of Lean books
• Members of Lean Startup-oriented meetup groups

If you go to the places you listed in your Externally Observable Behaviors, you'll find your Early Adopters.

In the next exercise, you'll prioritize each of your segments so you know which behaviors to focus in on first!