Smallness

It’s hard to compete with big social networks head-on these days. The network effects of those giant social networks are so strong, a straight-on challenge seems, well, challenging. But there is lots of opportunity to focus on one user niche or one specific form factor.

This isn’t about the Slack, Discord, Geneva or Circle groups you’re part of that start with a small version of a thing, but where the intention is to scale to hundreds or thousands of people that convene in a single public forum to discuss the topic du jour and get them to pay for the thing. This is about building the picks and shovels for intimate... See more

how Jack Conte of Patreon once framed online community: you may think your interests are niche—maybe only 1 in 1,000 people like the same things as you—but with 4 billion people online, that’s 4 million people who share your interests. On the internet, no niche is too niche.