I follow some of the whales, i find that what most of the whales that weren't early adopters all have is consistency, they always try to post at least 1 post a day!
Minnows really don't have any power in the platform xD I guess with time and persistence minnows will become dolphins and dolphins will become whales, early adopters were the smart ones, but it's still not to late, we are still mid adopters! we still don't have many youtubers in this platform and most of the 9gag and reddit ppl haven't changed to steemit!