One of the greatest challenges facing any start-up is “crossing the chasm”: bridging the gap between early adopters and mass-market buyers. Yet many promising businesses struggle even to reach the chasm. Often, founders leap in with money and a dream only to hit a wall. How can start-up founders diagnose and fix problems in order to arrive at this critical point?

Edward G. Amoroso provides an indispensable guide for start-ups looking to get off the ground and scale up to the next level. Getting to the chasm, as he illustrates through dozens of real-world case studies, requires long-term vision. Founders must focus on their core belief system—not simply what they do but why they are in business in the first place. Buyers connect with start-ups based on shared beliefs, and any founding team that does not understand this secret will struggle to build relationships with customers. Amoroso shares field-tested guidance for businesses in different spaces and stages on crafting a compelling message, understanding customers, benchmarking against competitors, and leveraging what makes a company irreplaceable. For founders, venture capital teams, private equity firms, investors, and readers with an interest in entrepreneurship, Reaching the Chasm is the roadmap for early-stage start-up success.

Edward G. Amoroso is the founder and CEO of TAG Infosphere, a global cybersecurity research and advisory firm, and a distinguished research professor in the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University. The author of several books, he is a former senior vice president and chief security officer at AT&T and has served on major corporate boards.