Despite the attention it gives to innovation tools, the product innovation literature does not address the behavioural motivation behind practitioners’ adoption of particular tools, or relate this to new venture development. This paper focuses on technology-based new ventures executing their first projects and presents insights into how their innovation tool adoption evolves over time. The paper synthesises case study findings into a hierarchy of tool adoption states encapsulating how new venture teams started with an exclusive focus on effectiveness, and over time progressively attended to problem solving, efficiency, and finally resource management. They often progressed to the next state only in response to costly mistakes and delays, whereas the experienced team in our comparison well-established firm operated within all four states from project initiation. Knowledge of this hierarchy of tool adoption states could help new venture teams to optimise the time they invest in product innovation tools.