Listening to early adopters is a slippery slope but plant your feet well, and you can climb up, surely and carefully.
- Sun, 14 December 2025
Early Adopters are an asset to any new business, but can also lead you astray if not faced with firmness and conviction in your vision.
When you release a new brand or a business, your earliest shred of validation and support comes from the risk-taking, bold consumers who wish to try something new. Naturally, finding these consumers feels like finding gold.
They sign up when your product is half-baked, give you blunt feedback (if you ask for it) and can often do word-of-the-mouth marketing for you too!
These are your Early Adopters.
However, like they say- while the truth is bitter, not every bitter line is the truth. What we mean is that while your early instincts might be to cater to those demands out of loyalty, you should also remember that if you lean on them too much, you will end up building a product for the first 100 consumers, instead of the next 10,000.
It is a slippery slope but plant your feet well, and you can climb up, surely and carefully.
Early adopters are people who try new products before everyone else. In India, these users are often from metro cities, tech-forward, and open to experimentation. They’re the ones testing your MVP. (MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. It’s a version of a new product with the least amount of features needed to be launched and provide value to early adopters, allowing for faster feedback and iteration.)
They are filling your Typeforms, and maybe even DMing you with bugs or feature requests or even with complaints.
But here is the catch that most people can miss- they are not necessarily your mass-market audience. Their needs, workflow or tolerance might be unlike the potential users you would be targeting later on.
Let us explain through an example.
Listening to early adopters is a slippery slope but plant your feet well, and you can climb up, surely and carefully.
Kuku FM — India’s leading regional-language audio platform — faced this exact challenge. Their early adopters were urban listeners familiar with Spotify and Audible, asking for bite-sized English content, sleek UX, and subscription bundles.
But the Kuku FM team knew their long-term audience wasn’t just metro users — it was Bharat. That meant deeper storytelling in Hindi, Marathi, and Tamil. It meant prioritizing relatable content over slick features.
So while they listened to early feedback, they didn’t let it hijack their roadmap. That decision helped them scale beyond the early adopters and reach over 10 million users across Tier 2 and 3 India. Kuku FM’s revenue from operations surged 2.1x year-on-year to Rs 88 crore in FY24, up from Rs 41 crore in FY23, according to its annual financial statements.
Takeaway? Plant your feet. Listen. Improve, but don’t lose sight of your vision.
D2C isn’t a shortcut—it’s a commitment. Without strong ops and retention, it can drain cash fast and crumble under its own hype.
Before interpreting feedback, get clear on who you’re building for in the long run. Is it urban professionals? College students? Small business owners in Tier 2 towns? This north star will help you filter what feedback matters — and what doesn’t.
One passionate user asking for a feature isn’t a trend. Ten unrelated users facing the same problem is. Use surveys, community channels, and cohort analysis to find themes, not outliers.
Involve early adopters in your journey — via Slack groups, AMAs, beta invites — but don’t let them dictate your direction. Use their input to validate, not define, what you build.
The Indian consumer base is diverse. Sometimes the quietest users — students, homemakers, regional creators — are your real audience. Build with them in mind, even if they’re not tweeting about it.
In the Indian startup ecosystem, where product-market fit often means cracking not just urban India but Bharat, early adopters are essential — but insufficient. They’ll help you polish your early product, challenge your assumptions, and give you the momentum to survive those first tough months. But they are not your entire market.
Kuku FM’s success shows us that the real opportunity often lies beyond the echo chamber of early users. The goal isn’t to keep them happy forever — it’s to learn from them fast, and then move beyond them confidently.
So take their praise with pride, their criticism with curiosity — and their roadmap requests with a pinch of salt.
And if you’re looking for more practical insights, tips, and definitions, stay tuned to Growth Sense News as we break down the A-Z of Startup Jargon in this series.
[This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. We do not assume any liability for actions taken based on this information]
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