Book · Book (~368 pages)

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

Andrew Chen · Harper Business 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.

  • 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 on coldstart.com ↗

It answers 13 questions

  1. What is community-led growth and is it right for my startup?
  2. My launch flopped and nobody cared, did I mess it up?
  3. How do I start a community from zero?
  4. How do I solve the cold-start / chicken-and-egg problem for a network or community?
  5. How do I keep a community engaged instead of dead?
  6. How do I tie community to real business outcomes?
  7. I keep spotting good trends too late, after they're already crowded. How do I get earlier signal?
  8. How do I launch in India where there's no single 'Product Hunt moment' that reaches Indian founders and buyers?
  9. Should I gate my launch behind a waitlist, or does a waitlist just kill the momentum I worked to build?
  10. Can I validate a marketplace idea before I have supply or demand?
  11. 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?
  12. 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?

And 1 more across the hub.

Read with it

  1. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  2. From the founder of CMX and author of The Business of Belonging, a practical framework for deciding whether to build community... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read A Founder's Guide to Community David Spinks
  3. Long-form, candid interviews with Indian founders and investors on how they actually grew, distributed and built brand, one of... The Neon Show / Neon Fund Podcast · 200+ episodes The Neon Show (100x Entrepreneur Podcast) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  4. This is the canonical argument that you do not need a mass market to build something real, you need a small number of people... The Technium (kk.org) Essay · ~15 min read 1,000 True Fans Kevin Kelly
  5. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  6. A YC partner and ex-Airbnb growth lead gives a tactical, no-fluff talk on landing early customers for both B2B and B2C. It's... YC Startup Library Video · ~30 min video How to Get Your First Customers Gustaf Alstromer (Y Combinator)
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