Crossing the Chasm
Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
Geoffrey A. Moore · 1991 · Marketing & Sales
10 min · 10 chaptersNarrated in your voice
Original summary · AI-drafted, human-published · added by Library
What it's about
Moore argues that new technology products don't glide smoothly from early buyers to the mass market. A dangerous gap—the chasm—separates visionary early adopters from pragmatic mainstream customers, and most tech products die there. The book gave Silicon Valley a shared vocabulary for market segments and a practical playbook for picking a narrow beachhead market, building a whole product, and using it as a base to win over skeptical majority buyers.
Reading plan
Pick a finish date and Genius lays out the days — the plan shows today's target and keeps you honest.
Read together
Start a circle and share the code — everyone sees everyone's honest place in the book. Accountability, not leaderboards.
Who it's for
- Startup founders trying to move beyond early enthusiastic users to sustainable mainstream sales - Product marketers and VCs who need a shared framework for evaluating go-to-market risk - Enterprise sales and business development leaders deciding which market segment to target first
What’s inside
- 1The Technology Adoption Life Cycle1 min
Customers for any new technology fall into five distinct psychographic groups, not one undifferentiated market, and a company's marketing must change as it moves from one group to the next.
- 2The Chasm Between Early Adopters and Early Majority1 min
The gap between visionaries and pragmatists is not a gentle slope but a chasm that most technology products fall into and never climb out of.
- 3Why Pragmatists Buy Differently1 min
Early majority customers make purchase decisions based on peer references, market leadership, and whole-solution completeness, not on the product's raw technical merit.
- 4Choosing a Beachhead: The D-Day Strategy1 min
A company crosses the chasm not by attacking the whole mainstream market at once but by concentrating all resources on dominating one narrow niche first.
- 5The Whole Product Concept1 min
Pragmatist customers will not buy a product; they will only buy a complete solution to their problem, and most of that solution is usually missing at launch.
- 6Positioning for the Pragmatist Market1 min
A product's position must be a single, simple, competitive claim understood instantly by the target niche, even if that means deliberately narrowing what the product claims to be.
- 7Distribution and Pricing Across the Chasm1 min
The distribution channel and pricing model that won early adopters usually cannot carry a product to the early majority, and switching them is a distinct, deliberate step.
About Geoffrey A. Moore
Geoffrey A. Moore holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Washington and became a marketing consultant to Silicon Valley technology firms in the 1980s. He co-founded the Chasm Group and later TCG Advisors, advising companies like Salesforce and Intel, and wrote several sequels including Inside the Tornado and Zone to Win.
