I'm reading Andrew Chen's "From 1 User to a Million". So far I've covered the first two chapters on network effects and cold start.

Here are a few interesting thoughts:

Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo described the value creation pyramid: 1% create content, 10% actively participate, 100% consume. For a product to work: you don't need to convert everyone. You need to find your 1% and understand why it matters to them.

So in Wikipedia, authors (those who actually create pages with information) are only 0.02% of users. On YouTube, 0.1–1% of the entire audience create videos. All the content used by millions is created by not so many people.

I started thinking about Nit through this framework.

📌Reminder:
Nit is a platform that connects people by intentions. You write a request and we match you with a relevant person.


📌And there are 3 main entities:
• Participant - someone who comes with a request: to find a travel companion, partner, friends, company for an event. Observes and responds to existing offers.
• Initiator - someone who wants to create a public intention or hold their own event through Nit.
• Organizer - an organization or business that wants to host an event, collaborate, or exchange resources.

Chen introduces the concept of the "hard side" - the part of the audience that is hardest to attract, but without which the product doesn't work. In Airbnb, it's hosts, not guests. In Uber, it's drivers, not passengers.

So in Nit, on one hand, the hard side is organizers (those who will professionally conduct content activities).
Find people who create activities, and everything will take off. But no. Organizers are already doing something, they have a fairly clear self-interest - they need an audience. Finding them is not that hard.

The hard side is those who publicly seek company ("I want this, who's with me") - initiators. There are few such people in general. They are those who are open to new things, can formulate a request, and understand why they need it. And they usually go into it based on their life ideology. They are the core, and then ambassadors.

And here I run into the next question from the book - atomic network. This is the minimum number of people at which the product starts working and providing value. Below this number, it's dead. Above it, growth begins.

Slack, for example, determined that they need 3 people in a team for the product to come alive. (from the same book)

We don't have that answer yet.

Even virality is somewhat present. Out of 40 users, 6 invited their friends. But we are far from understanding atomicity and hacking the network effect.

Now I'm thinking about three questions:
• what atomic network does Nit need
• what role do initiators play in it
• how to find them and motivate them to stay

Moving forward🚀🦄🧶