Scaling a minimum viable community

Products powered by network effects often follow an S curve. When growth slows down, you will need to find a new product.

The Cold Start Theory stages:

1. The problem. How do you get a team to use your product and get excited?
2. The ti...

Networks have different underlying structures. The growth of companies like Uber is bound by geography. They are very successful in San Francisco, but that does not help them to gain popularity in London. Companies like Airbnb have a global network effect. A B2B example would be ...

Many Silicon Valley startups have become so big because their products connect people. Products like Zoom, Dropbox, GitHub, even Microsoft Office are all different versions of this.

Network effects have been around for a long time. Theodore Veil, the chairm...

Design your network features thoughtfully. You need to understand what you think your network will look like first. Is it a local network? Or a network more like marketplace companies like eBay? 

Decide on how many users you need before the network is valuable. Zoom might b...

Andrew Chen writes in his book, The Cold Start Problem: Using Network Effects to Scale Your Product, how companies like Google, Uber, Dropbox, and Tinder use network effects to break through the competition and reach viral growth.

Network effects d...