Crossing the Chasm with Geoffrey Moore, Author

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Reich, Founder and CEO of RevOp Squared, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. We talk to a wide variety of B2B, SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics-informed decisions. Now on to today's show. Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics It Measure Up podcast. Today, we're joined by Geoffrey Moore, author of numerous books, including the landmark technology industry standard, go-to-market book, Crossing the Chasm, also founder of the Chasm Group, and venture partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. Today, we'll be covering four main areas with Geoff. First, the principles of Crossing the Chasm, as they apply in 2021 and beyond. Second, how legacy technology vendors can continue to survive and thrive in the evolving cloud industry. Third, the concept of zone management and the associated metrics to measure each zone. Fourth, Geoffrey's latest book, The Infinite Staircase, which is a real pivot for this technology industry thought leader. Geoff, please take a moment to give a brief background overview of your journey to becoming a guest on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast.

**Geoffrey Moore** (1:27)
Ray, as you know, we've been hanging out together for a long time. But this goes back, the first part of my career is going to show up at the end. I was an English professor and I wrote the dissertation I worked at. It was in the area of Renaissance literature, the intersection of philosophy and literature, and a lot of fun with that. But we came back to California in 1976 I got involved with the tech industry and I stayed there ever since. The work I did with Regis McKenna allowed me to write a book called Crossing the Chasm, which was my opportunity to take the technology adoption lifecycle and apply it to high-tech in a way that was a little bit novel. That caught on and allowed me to start my own consulting firm. As you mentioned, we formed the Chasm group and a couple of other spinoff consulting firms, bunch of books in between. Then I would say the bookend for the business books, Crossing the Chasm is how does a startup go to market? Then zone to win is how does a legacy established enterprise catch the next wave? Same journey in different contexts. Then as you said, I'm reverting back to my original type with this last book and getting back to the intersection of philosophy and my life's work.

**Ray Rike** (2:32)
I was at an Eagles concert last Friday night, and the first song they played, Geoff, was Hotel California. It was a song that many would claim is the most famous, if not the best Eagle song, and it kicked off an evening that was really a multi-decade long musical journey for me. I was thinking about our discussion today. I thought about, do I start with the Infinite Staircase, or do I start with that legacy, groundbreaking book, Crossing the Chasm?
I have to start with Crossing the Chasm, if that's okay with you.

**Geoffrey Moore** (3:00)
That's fine. Look, I'm delighted. I think the question is, it's a fair question, which is, look, that book was written in 1990 That was 31 years ago. It's been updated twice because it had to have all new examples, but the frameworks have never changed. The real question is, well, wait a minute, why is that still relevant now? It's a very, very different landscape as you and I both know. What we learned about that is, first of all, it doesn't apply to everything.
It is a B2B-oriented book, much more than a B2C-oriented book. B2C, the dynamics of viral marketing and B2C are very, very different. We can shoehorn them into Crossing the Chasm, but it's not what it's for. What it's for is B2B markets where you have considered decision-makers, there's budgeting, there's reviews. If you go through a sales cycle, it's an enterprise sales cycle. Even with small businesses, there's a review, although it's much lighter. The key idea behind it is pragmatic people want to wait and see if the new disruptive innovation is really going to be good for them. They don't like to be first. There's always a group that does like to be first, that was the early adopters, but then how do you cross the chasm? How do you get that pragmatic, you go first, I don't want to go first person to get in, and that was all about, as you well know, finding a beachhead market that would lean in because they really needed help. That was the core of the strategy. Of course, you guys were implementing it yourselves back at Netscape back in the day.