A few weeks after I finished Eric Ries' book; I bumped into this TED talk:
To my surprise, Derek Sivers illustrates in the video what Eric Ries said in his book. Do you notice the similarities? To quote Sivers: "The first follower is what transforms the lone nut into a leader". The early adopters are what transforms your crazy idea into a mainstream product.
In the video, the first follower calls his friends to join the dance, and more people start coming; once the movement is big enough, only an idiot wouldn't join it, right? The first followers are the leaders of the rest of your users.
Now, putting things in a software development context (let's think mobile apps). Think of a group of people who could be your early adopters. if your app is about music, maybe you know a DJ who can connect you into his DJ network; or maybe it's an app about working out, you could head to the local gyms and give early access to your app for free. Once you have a moderate amount of early adopters you can start getting meaningful feedback about your app's features, and most importantly, reacting to it before the app goes mainstream and more users are driven away by the bugs or annoying features that your early adopters would've caught. Or maybe one of those early adopters has a lot of influence over a bigger group of people; and by influencing him into using your app, you're indirectly end up influencing others.
If you ever are a lonely nut working on an app the people you know don't think it's a good idea; and you find one person or group interested in it; don't lose track of them, ask why they're interested; what does they think could be improved, ask if they know other persons or groups who might be interested. Maybe that's those are first followers who will make you, the lone nut, into the leader of a crazy dance.
