Being neither in Silicon Valley, nor on “Main Street,” I’m always fascinated by the delays between the launch of technology and the adoption of that technology by what I like to think of as “Main Street”–people who are not in the technology industry, not in Silicon Valley, or otherwise in the immediate influence of technology culture.

It’s clear that the most successful companies are the ones which cross over from being “cool technology” into mainstream, useful tools – ie, think iPod, YouTube, MySpace, etc. This can be most clearly marked in my own personal sphere, by when my parents forward on an email, buy a product, or otherwise talk about something coming out of the tech industry.

For example, I knew that the iPod had hit the mainstream, when my mother mentioned to me she needed help updating her brand new iPod; and that text messaging had finally penetrated and ruled the market when my father text-messaged me with a photo from a web site. Not that my parents are luddites, it’s just they’re of another generation, do not generally adopt technology very quickly, and live in a state that’s generally six months to a year behind “state of the art” here in California.

So, using this scale, it’s often a good reality check to look at technology from a “Main Street” point of view, and see where (and if) that technology might cross over from the early adopters to main street.

Throwing together a graphic, a rough distribution on the classic business school adoption curve (click for full size graph):

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Startups by Benjamin Kuo