We’ve spent a lot of time at WePay trying to get “early adopters” to sign up for our service. I imagine that every startup, by definition, is trying to do the same thing.
WePay is doing some serious stuff, so finding a cohort of people willing to try something new and unproven is particularly important for us. Mint is a good example of a website that probably struggled with the same thing.
I made the mistake of assuming that “early adopter” is a type of person. I think this opinion was shaped by Silicon Valley, where we like to think that we are early adopters, without need for further qualification – as if we are the first to try everything.
A few weeks ago, when all the apple enthusiasts were waiting in line for the iPhone 4, Bill and I gave out WePay t-shirts to everybody in line. We didn’t really expect any kind of material ROI, but we thought it was nice gesture, and it was “a concentrated population of early adopters” (as we called it at the time).
In reality, however, most of the people in line were just early adopters of the iPhone. Some were probably also early adopters of other apple products, and most likely other technologies as well. But not necessarily.
I don’t think, for example, that these people were the first people to use facebook. In fact, they probably weren’t. Some of them probably thought it was stupid, and some others probably still refuse to use it.
I think enthusiasts are the easiest early adopters to identify. Car enthusiasts are the first to buy Teslas, Apple enthusiasts are the first to buy iPhones, and gaming enthusiasts are the first to buy the new playstation. People enthusiasts (narcissists, social butterflies, etc.) were the first to sign up for facebook.
WePay is not providing a product that appeals to enthusiasts. Our early adopters are people who experience a problem that we are trying to solve. This is sickeningly obvious in retrospect, but it wasn’t when we originally launched.
I constantly have to remind myself that our early adopters are not the early adopters. It’s not so obvious, especially when your office is half a block from University Ave.
Ah hell, I’ll register. Can you use it for any old transaction? Donations to causes, stuff like that? What about buying stuff in bulk, with multiple shipping addresses and maybe even pickup addresses?
Does this fundamentally change anything? Can I use it for something remarkably new?
Best,
Kung
http://www.callmekung.com
@briankung
When facebook was first released, it was both *ubiquitous* and *exclusive*. Ubiquitous in that everyone on campus was using it; exclusive in that you had to basically be at HYP to get access initially. If you can recreate that blend of ubiquity and scarcity, you may be able to tap into a similar sort of success.
I agree…for the most part. However, it wasn’t “exclusivity” in the ivy-league sense. HYP were not the first three schools on facebook. Obviously Harvard was the first, but other Boston-area schools were the first to follow…and not necessarily in order of prestige.
I was at Boston College when facebook hit. I believe it was the fourth school to have facebook – and it was far from ubiquitous for a long time. And the early adopters were not the techie crowd, they were the cool kids.
Ok, I’ll bite.
First, thanks for registering – I knew I could guilt some of the HN crowd into registering with that post
For the most part, there is nothing remarkably revolutionary here – we are just making a traditionally painful process far less painful. You could have probably said the same about PayPal ten years ago.
However, I think there is something new in what we have built. Check out this post: http://blog.wepay.com/2009/07/a-new-kind-of-account/
I like the idea but haven’t had a chance to take advantage of it’s usefulness Yet!!
I use a competitor, paypal, quite a bit and pretty amazed that a lot of people don’t even use that still. If the set up is straightforward and easy, I think you will grow slowly but surely!
Hopefully not that slowly