Moore's claim is that a category does not grow smoothly. It passes through four inflection points, and at each one the customer changes so completely that the motion which just worked becomes the wrong one. Most founders experience this as a mystery: same pitch, same team, same product, suddenly landing worse than last quarter.
The four phases are the early market, the bowling alley, the tornado, and main street. Crossing the chasm is the passage into the second. The tornado arrives when the reason people buy flips from believing your vision to wanting what their peers already have.
1
Early market
Visionaries and technology enthusiasts, buying the vision. There is no budget line for you, so an executive sponsor has to create the funding. Every deal is bespoke and service heavy, because no partner ecosystem exists yet. The model is a project, even if what you sell is a product.
2
Bowling alley
Pragmatists with a problem already being solved badly, and getting worse. Budget exists, but it is committed to the workaround, so you have to redirect it. The model is a solution, sold on the problem rather than the product, then extended to adjacent segments through references and partners.
3
Tornado
The category goes horizontal and budgets appear everywhere at once. Now you want broad sales coverage, a standard product, and share, because whoever a department buys from first is usually who they stay with.
4
Main street
The product is commoditized and the budget is annual. Moore's point about this century is that services become the new place of innovation. Taxis existed for a hundred years before Uber converted the product into a service. Tornado is the land, main street is the expand.
