The Cold Start Problem: Using Network Effects to Scale Your Product

Within these platforms, just ask yourself, “If a piece of content was created, and no one saw it, would the creator be disappointed?” If the answer is yes, then social feedback is a key value. The combination of tools, aggregation of audience, and a networked product is what is needed to unlock the hard side of these networks

These companies pioneered a new style of “bottom-up” growth, where individual contributors seeded a product’s adoption within a customer company.

For networked products, the curation of the network—who’s on it, why they’re there, and how they interact with each other—is as important as its product design. Starting with a deliberate point of view on who’s best for your network will define its magnetism, culture, and ultimate trajectory.

There are big advantages to an in-app wait list experience. For example, Robinhood, the commission-free online brokerage, had a hot and widely anticipated launch, and launched by signing users up to a wait list. On the back end, the team slowly let people in, pacing the growth so servers weren’t overwhelmed. The Robinhood mechanic asked wait list u

fact, it’s educational to use as an example a technology product first introduced more than a hundred years ago and that we still use today on a daily basis: the telephone.

Yes, of course you eventually want to figure profitability out. But for networked products, in the earliest stages, sometimes it makes sense to spend—often wildly—to pay up for growth. The goal is to get the market to hit the Tipping Point, driving toward strong positive network effects, and then pull back the subsidies. The result, if executed pro

The more difficult the work needed to be part of the hard side of a network, the smaller the percentage of users who will participate.

The entire ecosystem stays on because the value is in bringing everyone together. That’s the magic.

Of course he was talking about getting to product/market fit more generally, but for networked products, I would take this description and infuse it with network goodness—users are inviting other users, and sharing content from your product across the internet. You search on Twitter, Reddit, and other social media and it’s chock full of your loyal

Driver referrals were typically structured as a give/get incentive—give $250 and get $250 when your friend signs up to drive.