Crossing the chasm, an entrepreneurial marketing book by Geoffrey Moore, talks about the diffusion of high tech products. Written in the early 1990s, its observations still hold true. 

The book observed that there is a significant difference in expectations between the early adopters of a technology and the rest that follow the early adopters. 

In the early days of a startup, what we need are the early adopters.  

Early adopters are people who find it easy to imagine, understand, and appreciate the benefits of a new technology, and to relate these potential benefits to their other concerns. They do not rely on well-established references in making these buying decisions, preferring instead to rely on their own intuition and vision.

– Crossing the Chasm

What can instead happen is that due to the seductive prospect of new customers and achieving growth goals, a startup may sign up pilots who do not have the early adopter mindset. This results in a loss of focus or loss of pilots, which can prove fatal. (Here is the first post on winning pilots.)