Do things that don't scale : YC Startup Library | Y Combinator

Paradoxically, then, network effects businesses must start with especially small markets. Facebook started with just Harvard students—Mark Zuckerberg’s first product was designed to get all his classmates signed up, not to attract all people of Earth. This is why successful network businesses rarely get started by MBA types: the initial markets are

Common themes emerge when you look at Slack’s strong network launch as well as the successes across marketplaces, social networks, developer platforms, and dozens of other categories. Many of them are counterintuitive: The networked product should be launched in its simplest possible form—not fully featured—so that it has a dead simple value propos

Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy into actually solving real problems for real people. It gives you a stronger foundation to grow from. It eliminates the friction of big infrastructure and gets right to the point. And it will let you change your plan in an instant, as you’re working closely with those first customers telling you what t

A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.