The Early Adopter Trap

I've been early to everything.

Meerkat. Top 20 globally. LinkedIn video before it was cool. Snapchat, where I built an award-winning Women In Tech channel. Giphy, where I hit 10.7 billion views. Substack. NFTs with Chubbiverse. Every single time, I showed up before the crowd, rode the wave, felt the magic of free organic reach.

And every single time, I forgot to collect the emails.

If you read my last letter about digital sharecropping, you already know the punchline. I diagnosed the disease. I just kept catching it.

Here's what nobody tells you about being early: the organic reach is so intoxicating that collecting emails feels like leaving the party to do your taxes. You're getting attention for free. The algorithm loves you. People are finding you without you lifting a finger. Why would you redirect them off-platform? That's like walking out of a buffet to go grocery shopping.

So you don't. You ride. You grow. You screenshot the numbers. 30K followers. 10.7 billion views. 3x LinkedIn Top Voice. It feels like you've built something.

You haven't. You've built a really impressive lease.

Let me walk you through my résumé of being early and learning nothing:

Meerkat. Top 20 livestreamer. App died. 20,000 followers, gone overnight. I wrote a whole letter about this one.

LinkedIn. Zero to 30,000 in 14 months. But LinkedIn owns every single one of those followers. They decide who sees my posts. They change the algorithm on a Tuesday and my reach drops 80%.

Snapchat. Award-winning channel. Platform pivoted to something else entirely. Audience scattered like pigeons.

Giphy. 10.7 billion views. Billion. But views are not emails. Views are not relationships. Views are applause from strangers who will never remember your name.

Substack. Early again. The energy felt like Meerkat all over again. I wrote about it at the time. That should have been the red flag.

NFTs. Chubbiverse was a multi-million dollar brand. Then the entire market collapsed. Another hotel that burned down while I was still unpacking.

Six platforms. Six times early. Six times I built on someone else's land.

The pattern is embarrassing once you see it. The same personality trait that makes you first also makes you terrible at staying and harvesting. Early adopters are wired for what's next, not for consolidation. We're explorers, not farmers. And the industry celebrates exploration. "10 billion views!" makes a great LinkedIn post. "I have 3,000 email addresses I own" does not. One is sexy. The other is smart.

Here's the thing that took me six platforms to learn: email is boring, ugly, and old. Email is also the only channel that has survived every platform transition since 1995. Vine is dead. Meerkat is dead. Google+ is dead. Friendster, MySpace, Tumblr as you knew it. All dead or unrecognisable. Email is still here. Still converting. Still mine.

Everett Rogers wrote about this in 1962. His Diffusion of Innovations theory maps how new ideas spread through populations. Innovators and early adopters jump first. They take the risk. They get the early reward. But the theory doesn't say anything about early adopters keeping what they found. That part is up to you.

I didn't keep it. Six times.

So if there's a next time, and there will be because I genuinely cannot help myself, here's what I'd tell the version of me who just signed up:

You have a window. The organic reach is real and it won't last. Use it. Not to build a funnel, not to optimise for conversions. Just get the email. One email. Then another. Then another. Because the platform will change. The algorithm will shift. The app might die in its sleep. But the email won't.

Being early is a gift. What you do with the early window is a choice.

I've been given this gift six times. Maybe seven. Each time I built on someone else's land. Not because I didn't know better. I literally wrote a letter about sharecropping. But because the early dopamine is so good you forget to pack a bag before the hotel burns down.

I'm packing the bag now. Better late than never. Better late than seven times.

— String

P.S. If KFC had only existed on Meerkat, nobody would eat fried chicken anymore. Build the restaurant, not the food cart.