from Hacker News

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

by williamtrask on 4/22/25, 1:24 PM with 23 comments

• by garrickvanburen on 4/22/25, 5:27 PM

  I originally read The Cold Start when I was inside a startup studio with an abundance of marketplace ideas.

  This book helped clarify for me that no successful marketplace starts out as a marketplace - simply because you need to start out with ready access to one side (likely the supply side as in the Uber & AirBnB examples) and build demand.

  The marketplace/network then emerges strategically as more suppliers are onboarded.

  This insight helped quickly focus and filter the marketplace ideas we didn't have any business pursuing.

• by yodon on 4/22/25, 3:57 PM

  Am I right in thinking this is only the second blog post by this author? If so, wow - way to start with excellence.

• by tough on 4/22/25, 7:52 PM

  http://nfx.com/ was always a good source on Network Effects on Digital Products.

  I always also liked Andrew's Chen blog posts, he ended up hired by a16z

• by game_the0ry on 4/22/25, 8:59 PM

  I am kind of surprised that two obvious solutions to the cold start problem are not mentioned:

  1. affiliate marketing

  2. paid ads

  I am not a marketer, but I would certainly consider those 2 options for growth.

• by pluto_modadic on 4/22/25, 4:29 PM

  this reminds me - fediverse apps can build a network effect that incentivizes more fediverse apps to be activitypub compatible: https://www.augment.ink/bridges-the-last-network-effect/

• by ilrwbwrkhv on 4/22/25, 6:13 PM

  yeah this was actually a horrible book because it gives the vibe of greater discovery on how these work but as usual with most of these things it badly hides either by choice or by stupidity the real way these network effects came into being.

  So for example, Uber and Airbnb started by breaking laws and helping people make money. If you are okay breaking laws, you can get many networks started.

  PayPal grew by bribing people with money.

  LinkedIn grew with massive amounts of spam, maybe the spammiest company in history of tech.

  Clubhouse tried to be cool for a while with a few Silicon Valley famous names, but is dead.

  Slack grew because the founder was very famous and could seed a large amount of initial customers based on his profile.

  I can go on and on.

  Out of these reddit might be the only one that actually broke the cold start problem with some light levels of seeding and pretending to be different users and also digg collapsing.

  I actually hate these kind of books written by VCs who are purposely hiding the truth about a lot of these businesses.