Do things that don't scale : YC Startup Library | Y Combinator
Brian Chesky explains how Airbnb solved the chicken-and-egg problem
“Marketplaces are incredibly defensible at scale, and maybe it’s because they’re incredibly hard to start. And the problem is simple - they call it the chicken and egg problem.”
As Brian explains, it was tough to bootstrap A... See more
Startup Archivex.comIt's not enough just to do something extraordinary initially. You have to make an extraordinary effort initially. Any strategy that omits the effort — whether it's expecting a big launch to get you users, or a big partner — is ipso facto suspect.
Paul Graham • Do Things that Don't Scale
My advice: Your product’s first atomic network is probably smaller and more specific than you think. Not a massive segment of users, or a particular customer segment, or a city, but instead something tiny, maybe on the order of hundreds of people, at a specific moment in time.