Hiring By The Adoption Curve
Image: AI generated and you can tell!!
One of the most useful tools I’ve found when building companies isn’t a financial model, a sales playbook, or even a hiring plan. It’s the adoption curve.
You’ve probably seen it before: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority, late majority, and laggards. It’s a framework most often applied to how technology spreads across the market. But in my experience, it works just as well when you’re thinking about people — especially when you’re hiring for a startup.
Lessons from my first agency
I first saw this play out when I was the second employee at Boyd & Moore. Us early stage hires were scrappy, unproven, and still figuring out what kind of company we wanted to be. At that stage, nothing was stable. The systems weren’t there, the brand didn’t carry weight, and most of the time we were building the plane while flying it.c
Some people thrived in that environment. They leaned into the chaos, took risks, and made things happen with very little structure around them. Looking back, they fit perfectly into the “innovator” and “early adopter” buckets. They weren’t paralysed by the unknown. If anything, they found energy in it.
Others didn’t. They were smart, capable, and would have been excellent hires once the business was more established. But dropped into the startup phase, they struggled. They wanted processes that didn’t exist yet. They needed predictability that we couldn’t provide. They weren’t wrong for feeling that way — it just meant they were further along the adoption curve. More “early majority” than “early adopter.”
Why early adopters thrive in startups
And that’s the lesson: in a startup, you need to hire according to the curve.
Innovators and early adopters are the people who thrive on building. They’re comfortable with risk, or at least confident enough in themselves to push through the anxiety of risk. They see the trade-off: yes, it’s unstable, but the upside — the chance to create something new, to shape a company, to learn faster than anywhere else — is worth it.
Later adopters, on the other hand, are essential once a company has traction. They bring the discipline, the repeatability, and the process that helps a business scale. But if you bring them in too early, you often get a mismatch. They’re looking for security, but what they find is volatility. They’re expecting structure, but what they get is a blank canvas. And that disconnect can be painful for everyone.
Knowing where you sit on the curve
I’ve also come to recognise something about myself: I am not built for the late-adopter side of the curve.
If you dropped me into a company that was smooth sailing, where the systems were humming and nothing really needed to change, I’d be a bad fit. In truth, I’d probably go toxic. My mind doesn’t work that way. To steal a line from a song, my mind buzzes like a fridge. I’m wired for ideas, always searching for a new angle, always thinking of fresh ways to do things.
That’s why I thrive in startups. Startups are essentially problem factories. Every day, something isn’t working, and the job is to find a way forward. That’s where I’m most effective: solving problems, finding solutions, pushing the model into new shapes.
And this is the bigger point: we all need to understand where we sit on the adoption curve. Some people are natural builders. Others are optimisers. Neither is “better” — but knowing your place on the curve helps you find the right environment. It’s also something that should come out in any interview, whether you’re joining a company or hiring for one.
Because fit isn’t just about skills. It’s about whether you belong in a messy, problem-solving startup, or in a stable, finely tuned organisation that needs consistency more than change.
Applying the curve to my own ventures
This is exactly how I think about building my own teams today. For most people looking at us right now, we’re simply too risky. We don’t have the brand awareness yet. We don’t have the fully scaled infrastructure. From their perspective, it’s easier to wait and see — and join once the business is proven. That’s completely natural. That’s how the adoption curve works.
But those aren’t the people I want at this stage. The ones I want are the innovators and early adopters. The people who see opportunity where others see risk. The ones who want to shape something new, not just plug into something that already exists.
This will be my third time in this cycle. I’ve been part of starting up someone else’s company, I did my own, and now it’s round 3. Every time, the pattern is the same: if you hire people too far down the adoption curve, they either churn quickly or drag down the culture. If you hire the right ones early, they give you the momentum to reach the next stage. We will take our time.
A lens for hiring, not just products
That’s why the adoption curve isn’t just a way to think about products. It’s a powerful lens for hiring.
If you want to build a startup team, don’t chase the majority. Don’t waste time trying to convince people who are waiting for all the risk to be removed. Instead, find your innovators and early adopters — the ones who are willing to take the ride with you when things are still messy.
Because those are the people who will help you cross the chasm.
