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Andrew Chen

The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects Hardcover – December 7, 2021

by Andrew Chen (Author)

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A startup executive and investor draws on expertise developed at the premier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and as an executive at Uber to address how tech’s most successful products have solved the dreaded "cold start problem”—by leveraging network effects to launch and scale toward billions of users.

Although software has become easier to build, launching and scaling new products and services remains difficult. Startups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect,” where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them, whether they’re messaging apps, workplace collaboration tools, or marketplaces. Network effects provide a path for fledgling products to break through, attracting new users through viral growth and word of mouth.

Yet most entrepreneurs lack the vocabulary and context to describe them—much less understand the fundamental principles that drive the effect. What exactly are network effects? How do teams create and build them into their products? How do products compete in a market where every player has them? Andrew Chen draws on his experience and on interviews with the CEOs and founding teams of LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest to offer unique insights in answering these questions. Chen also provides practical frameworks and principles that can be applied across products and industries.

The Cold Start Problem reveals what makes winning networks thrive, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and, most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Business
Publication date

December 7, 2021
Dimensions

6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0062969749
ISBN-13

978-0062969743
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Popular Highlights in this book

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In its classic usage, a network effect describes what happens when products get more valuable as more people use them.
Highlighted by 1,046 Kindle readers
The entire ecosystem stays on because the value is in bringing everyone together. That’s the magic. The “effect” part of the network effect describes how value increases as more people start using the product.
Highlighted by 1,029 Kindle readers
Larger competitors are often able to copy the product, but find it difficult to capture the network.
Highlighted by 986 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A practical handbook for entrepreneurs struggling with how to effectively apply what can be a devilishly tricky concept." — Business Insider

About the Author

Andrew Chen is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, investing in early-stage consumer startups. He is a board member of fast-growing startups like Substack, Clubhouse, Z League, All Day Kitchens, Sleeper, Maven, and Reforge, and previously led the rider growth teams at Uber during their high-growth, pre-IPO years. He has a popular professional blog, and has been featured in Wired, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He holds a BS in applied mathematics from the University of Washington, where he graduated at the age of nineteen. He splits his time between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Business (December 7, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062969749
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062969743
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #16,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Knowledge Capital (Books)
- #24 in Computers & Technology Industry
- #126 in Entrepreneurship (Books)

Customer Reviews:
949 ratings

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Andrew Chen

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Andrew Chen is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, investing in early stage startups — focused on the themes of games/entertainment, marketplaces, and next-gen social products. He is on the boards of Clubhouse, Substack, Z League, Sleeper, All Day Kitchens, Sandbox VR, Reforge, and others.

Previously, he served as the head of Uber's rider growth teams, where he focused on user acquisition, retention, and engagement during the company's meteoric pre-IPO years. He writes about user growth, metrics, and network effects at andrewchen.com and has been cited at Wired, WSJ, and New York Times. He holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington, where he graduated at the age of 19.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

949 global ratings

5 star		66%
4 star		23%
3 star		8%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Barry Krusch

One of the top five business books!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 13, 2022

Verified Purchase

I am writing this review out of anger, for all of the so-called "helpful" negative reviews that for some reason are at the top of the heap, these reviews are dangerously misleading, and proof positive that the best way to buy books on Amazon is simply to buy the book, check it out, and if the negative reviews are right, return it, and if they are wrong, keep it.

Trust me, this is a book you are going to want to keep, as I read a book I take notes, and the more notes I take, the better the book is, and this book is in the top five of the notes I have taken, it is chock-filled with essential observations about how to solve the chicken egg problem, with lots of case studies and lots of details from numerous companies. It's an essential book for anyone who is starting a company.

The author is clearly an insider and knows these companies from the inside as well, and you are not going to find much information in this book from other sources, for that reason. Several of the things that he has talked about I have done Google searches for, and come up completely empty, so if you believe that information is gold, as I do, that means that to not read this book is to be giving up lots of pieces of gold.

Do yourself a favor, get this book, start reading it, and after you'll have learned a valuable lesson about how essential it is to ignore negative reviews and just try things out yourself.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Magnus

great primer on network effect but it could be shorter

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 9, 2022

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The book contains wonderful framework to understand network effect and contain great examples from the real world. Although i strongly feel this could be shorter

One person found this helpful

Helpful

G. Leung

Must read for tech founders

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 8, 2022

Verified Purchase

I was reluctant to pick this up thinking Andrew might just rehash concepts from his previous blog posts and courses.

So I was pleasantly surprised to read about a fresh theory on network products that I have not encountered anywhere else. Andrew Chen devises new concepts like "networks of networks" to explain different phenomenons and strategies that he has observed across the industry. It's a riveting read recommended for anyone in tech.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mikko Ikola

Must read for builders utilizing network effects in their products

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 13, 2022

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Must read for builders utilizing network effects in their products. This books cover all major web 2 success stories and generalizes the underlying framework how to think about building ‘Atomic network’.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Shankar Saikia

Fabulous, obviously :)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

I summarized my review as “fabulous, obviously” because Andrew Chen, from my reading of his newsletter, tweets etc over the years, seems to know this content absolutely “cold”. He IS the guru.
Among the many things I liked about the book is it’s structure that matches the “stages of the cold start framework” (Figure 8 on page 44 of the hardcover edition). The stories (“case studies” as we call them in enterprise software sales) are well written, short and easy to read.
I read the first half of the book diligently, taking notes, highlighting, re-reading sections etc. I read the second half a lot faster and skimmed quite a few sections.
Strange as this may sound, one of the best parts about the book is in the “acknowledgments” section (last “chapter”) where Andrew gives credit to everyone that helped him write and produce the book. One realizes that it takes a village to raise a child, produce a book, close a deal etc.
One final note: my standard for a truly amazing book is “is it worth reading a second
time?”. My favorite books (eg., “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Kahneman, “Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson, “The Future of Money” by Prasad, “Naked Economics” and “Naked Money” by Wheelan, “Basic Economics” by Sowell … these come to mind) are ones that I’ve read multiple times. Does “The Cold Start .. “ make that list ?
…. The answer is “no”, and the main reason is that the topic is a little dry and unrelated to my core love of economics, finance, neuroscience and lately geopolitics…
However, I recommend every tech marketeer read this book.
Awesome job Andrew Chen !

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kurt C. Davis

some interesting info but verbose

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 6, 2022

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This book is really for someone who is starting a new marketplace — which I am. I took away some good points but those have to be uncovered in the chapters. The book is not that well written. I had a difficult time completing it; the stories often didn’t seem on point and forced. His introductions are not clear and end of chapters have no summaries. I think he needs a proper business editor to help him next time. Nonetheless you may get a few nuggets. I’d suggest to focus on his one experience at Uber with clear points and then add some anecdotes from others.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Avid Product Guy

This isn’t a book - it’s a year long business school class

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 9, 2022

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If you are into entrepreneurship, building start ups, developing network products, and finding ways to expand your business deep into the periphery and into the veins of network community, then this is the book for you. This book is just not a technical knowledge base. It is a book written, developed, and communicated with examples and experiences that can only come from the lenses of a veteran start up and venture capitalist. All I have to say is this book is meant to last forever as long as one is building a network-based community start up. Thank you Andrew Chen.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Network effects, a simpler explanation

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

Great look at mega -scale network effect companies; how they start, scale, compete and die. Before reading I would have said Facebook, LinkedIn, Uber will last for 30+ years as a Fortune 500. Now I’m convinced they are dead and don’t know who will kill them or from where it will come. But as our world connects the patterns us humans follow will ever shift and change to the next great thing. All in all any book that challenges you and makes you think and grow is well worth a read. Cold Starr is worth reading.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

TT

Crossing the Chasm x Networks

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 1, 2022

Verified Purchase

There's a simple premise to the book that you can pick up in a blog post. It's fleshed out with a tonne of anecdotes and war stories, which can get a little self-indulgent and don't have a HUGE variety to them, outside of silicon valley favourites.

The accounts ring true from personal experience and the structure has proved useful to articulate the network methodology to others.

I haven't gone out of my way to recommend that others read the book, but the parts I would suggest are:
1) the first section setting out the model.
2) how to delineate network effects into acquisition, engagement, growth phases - because people say do say "network effects" all the time without actually qualifying them. This imprecision leads to poor product strategy.
3) the horror story chapter of what went wrong at Google Plus.

2 people found this helpful

London_TVboy

Light on new ideas or insights

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

It’s a decent read as an intro to network effects if you are completely new to the concept. The attempts to create a new vocabulary fall flat. Case studies are surface level, and often the same ones that you’ll find in various other books. If you’re looking to deeply understand the topic, Platform revolution is probably a better read. A generous dose of self-promotion and name-dropping thrown in to boot.

5 people found this helpful

Chris

Underwhelmed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

Big fan of AC. Read his blog for a number of years. Book reproduces a lot of his well trodden ideas / theories. Companies on the list aren’t that exciting either. Let’s face it Uber is a joke of a company and trying to frame their success as some kind of mathematical strategy beyond spending millions on advertising whilst circumnavigating labour laws is a bit of a stretch. “Network effects” is classic SV. Repackaging, supply and demand and word of mouth as some new paradigm.

One person found this helpful

Viktor Prokopenya

Very deep book on building networks

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 12, 2022

Verified Purchase

The book answers a lot of questions, which every entrepreneur has somewhere inside him. The most interesting thought for me is that deciding which users to hire first is as important as which features to build. Google plus failed because it launched to too many disconnected networks at the same time.

Andrew, thank you for the great work. It would be great to meet you one day.

Vikrama D.

Last 3 units make it good read

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on January 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

The Escape Velocity, The Ceiling and The Moats save the book from almost there to good. If you e followed the latest in tech, the first units will be a breeze - there is some spark but only some.
Last 3 units though come into their own. The Ceiling esp is a really good collection.
It's an exhaustive read but still leaves much in theory and takeaways uncovered. Look forward to Edition 2.

One person found this helpful

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