Earlyvangelist

Early adopters are not enough when you are launching a new product to the market (and potentially, a complex product). Evangelists are those who will speak about what you do to others, while earlyvangelists are those who are both early and speak about your solution.

They are the focus of the Customer Discovery phase. They can be called the Crazy quilt around a product.

effectuation theory for entrepreneurs also develops this idea, when it points out that entrepreneurs see early customers as partners with whom to co-design, and not plainly money sources.

Earlyvangelists are those who derive value from being the first (bragging rights), or a competitive edge. A mistake would be to give this group a heavy discount, after all, they get twice the value if it works.

Without the discount, you can also validate how the acquisition of the budget happens, how much they are willing to pay, and how much they use the product.

Traits to identify them:

• The have a problem
• They know they have a problem
• They are searching for a solution and have a timetable
• They probably tried to solve the problem by themselves
• They have committed or can quickly obtain a budget to purchase a solution