Everything from

Harper Business

1 resource from Harper Business we point founders to, and the questions each answers.

📖 Book

Paid Advanced

The definitive playbook for network and community-led products, drawn from Andrew Chen's a16z experience and interviews with Slack, Uber, Tinder, Airbnb and more.

The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects

From Harper Business by Andrew Chen Book (~368 pages)

Build the smallest self-sustaining 'atomic network' before trying to scale.
Focus on the hard side of the network and give it a magic moment.
Networks are anti-viral until they cross a density threshold, so start narrow.

Open coldstart.com →

Answers My launch flopped and nobody cared, did I mess it up? What is community-led growth and is it right for my startup? How do I start a community from zero? How do I solve the cold-start / chicken-and-egg problem for a network or community? How do I keep a community engaged instead of dead? How do I tie community to real business outcomes? Can I validate a marketplace idea before I have supply or demand? I keep spotting good trends too late, after they're already crowded. How do I get earlier signal? My whole business is built on one platform's trend (like WhatsApp or an app store). How do I ride it without getting wiped out by a policy change? I'm still a student. How do I use my age and campus as an advantage for spotting the next trend? I run a two-sided marketplace. Do I get my first customers by starting with supply or demand, and how do I avoid the empty-restaurant problem? How do I launch in India where there's no single 'Product Hunt moment' that reaches Indian founders and buyers? Should I gate my launch behind a waitlist, or does a waitlist just kill the momentum I worked to build?

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