Early adopters should be rewarded, not punished

Going for the mainstream markets is not an easy job. Many times startup companies don't fail because they can't build a product – they fail because they can't figure out how to get majority of the people to get interested in it.

In an earlier post I wrote about Geoffrey A. Moore's book Crossing the Chasm – Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers. In that he explains that there is a gap between early adopters and early majority.

The best strategy to the mainstream market (early majority and late majority) goes through domination of selected niche markets. There are some groups which are, for some reason or another, the most interested in the product. Startup should focus on those groups and get their trust. Majority of the people want to see real world examples for the product being used by other people – they don't want to buy something just because it's a new innovation.

It's very rare that a product is instantly adopted by the majority, especially when it's something disruptive and different.

By dominating a few small markets you can show to the majority that the product is great and there are real people who enjoy using it. It's the best way to implant an idea into their heads that the product might be worth of using for them, too.

How this applies to Steem? One example is the Korean community which has been very active. They are clearly early adopters of Steem. They like this platform and are making it viral by encouraging their peers to join. So you don't need to be a rocket scientist to conclude that the Steem community should have a very positive attitude towards Koreans. They are one of the most obvious niche markets that Steem should be dominating.

That doesn't mean that Steemians should give any kind of special support for the Korean community forever. Just for a while so Steem becomes the go-to publication platform for them. When a group is fully hooked and network effect is formed, it's time to find another group and give special support to them.

From this perspective the actions of @berniesanders are detrimental. He is attacking the Korean community instead of giving them full support and help. He is not only taking profits from Koreans – which are very much deserved because early adopters should be rewarded – but also decreasing their reputation score. For some weird reason @berniesanders has a reputation score of 65. His bullying and disrespectful attitude against other users should get him downvoted much more often. So as a friendly reminder: don't forget to downvote @berniesanders everytime you see him attacking others or using a impolite language. And for the sake of a holy cat, don't ever upvote him – it just gives him more power in this platform, which is harmful for our journey towards the mainstream market.

And of course there are other reasons to support Koreans, like this band:

YEAH BEAT THAT TRIANGLE BABY!