There's a saying that first-time founders focus on product and second-time founders focus on distribution. It's impossible to build a business if you can't distribute your product, and getting people to buy or use the thing you're building is make or break.
Networked products and marketplaces are very difficult to get off the ground. They suffer chicken and egg problems. Social networks aren't useful unless others are on them, and marketplaces aren't interesting to sellers unless there are buyers, and vice versa. Usually, getting supply, whether that is content or something to sell, is meaningfully easier than finding demand.
Almost every modern network has scaled demand and kickstarted its growth flywheel by piggybacking off of someone else's network. They will start by creating some new form of shareable media (and sometimes it's a brand new structural format like a tweet), and then find ways to syndicate that content or make it easily shareable across other networks.
Twitter did this by making tweets easily shareable and embeddable in the Facebook feed. Everyone starting seeing new tweets on Facebook with the twitter logo floating around everywhere. It created demand for the content on this brand new platform. Then tumblr and Instagram followed the same playbook and started to syndicate their user's content on these networks. Then came TikTok, and they had even more networks to piggyback on. In every one of these instances, the new platform made it extremely easy for users to share their content on networks where they already had a following.
There's a saying that first-time founders focus on product and second-time founders focus on distribution. It's impossible to build a business if you can't distribute your product, and getting people to buy or use the thing you're building is make or break.
Networked products and marketplaces are very difficult to get off the ground. They suffer chicken and egg problems. Social networks aren't useful unless others are on them, and marketplaces aren't interesting to sellers unless there are buyers, and vice versa. Usually, getting supply, whether that is content or something to sell, is meaningfully easier than finding demand.
Almost every modern network has scaled demand and kickstarted its growth flywheel by piggybacking off of someone else's network. They will start by creating some new form of shareable media (and sometimes it's a brand new structural format like a tweet), and then find ways to syndicate that content or make it easily shareable across other networks.
Twitter did this by making tweets easily shareable and embeddable in the Facebook feed. Everyone starting seeing new tweets on Facebook with the twitter logo floating around everywhere. It created demand for the content on this brand new platform. Then tumblr and Instagram followed the same playbook and started to syndicate their user's content on these networks. Then came TikTok, and they had even more networks to piggyback on. In every one of these instances, the new platform made it extremely easy for users to share their content on networks where they already had a following.
is building a headless marketplace that can post listings on Farcaster and other networks. Etsy's sellers would post listings of their wares everywhere and anywhere on the internet in the early days. In all these instances, there's an incentive for both the platform and its early users to share broadly.
Sometimes networks can grow by bootstrapping in the physical world. When we started GroupMe we partnered with music festivals so attendees would use the product at large events like Coachella and Bonnaroo. We would even walk around some music festivals and hand out flyers.
"do things that don't scale" like handing out flyers
When Foursquare first emerged restaurants and bars would showcase "check-in" stickers on their windows and the A-frames they stood up on city sidewalks to incentivize foot traffic.
And Facebook famously piggybacked on top of college networks.
In some ways, it's safer to piggyback on top of analog networks than it is digital ones. Unless a security guard prevents you from physically being somewhere, it's a permissionless way to grow. While digital networks offer meaningfully better distribution and faster scale, there is always a gatekeeper that will likely shut you down one day (unless it's a crypto network or open protocol like Farcaster).
Facebook famously throttled Twitter, Twitter and Facebook throttled Instagram, and everyone cut off TikTok. Networks don't like when other networks grow on top of them, especially when they have the same business models of competing for eyeballs or other types of demand (eg housing listings). These networks are becoming more closed and increasingly neurotic about this - Elon Musk deliberately supresses tweets with links in them. This means that the piggyback bootstrap is usually a moment in time arbitrage opportunity of sorts. It should be used as an important early growth tactic to kickstart a flywheel, but not an ongoing dependency. Plan to be cut off entirely, so wisely make the most of your window of opportunity.
As AI tools facilitate entirely new types of media and as new marketplace models emerge, entrepreneurs should be deliberate about what their piggyback opportunities look like. They'll likely require a level of unprecedented creativity - you'll need new ways to hack existing networks. It's something I'm thinking about, and I encourage anyone building something in consumer to come to the table with some crafty ideas.
I love being outdoors in nature. Whether with friends or entirely by myself, it's where I'm happiest.
This summer I got to spend a lot of time outdoors. We stay in the Catskills and there is something very special about being surrounded by green and trees and animals and dirt roads. It's calming and helps to slow things down and put things in perspective.
As the summer was coming to an end and we were preparing to move back to the city I went on one of my favorite bike rides upstate. In Minnewaska State Park, you can bike to a place called Lake Awosting which is only accessible by a 3 mile hike or bike and it's gorgeous. Oftentimes I go there and I have the entire lake to myself and I can sit and read and swim and think.
Then I can go bike a big loop around the park and stop at overlooks like this.
During one of these breaks, I started to think about internet applications, as one is wont to do when in the depths of the great outdoors. I realized that some of my favorite apps, the ones I find most useful and enjoy the most, are ones that emphasize getting outdoors. These include AllTrails, Strava, TrailForks, and Backcountry (for shopping for outdoor gear). One of the neat things about AllTrails and Strava is that networks have popped up around them. A lot of these are owned by private equity, which is a bummer.
I'd love to see more people building things to help the world experience nature more frequently. There is a huge market for people that are passionate about being outdoors, and it's a noble mission to help people experience these things. And as an added benefit, the market for the "outdoors" is huge. We need more entrepreneurs focused on getting more people to touch grass.
My favorite mode of transportation in NYC is the electric citibike. I ride one every morning to and from the USV office. There's a dock on my block in Brooklyn and a dock around the corner from our office. I love my route - it's a straight shot across the Manhattan Bridge where I get to look at the water and feel the breeze in the morning and early evening, and then through the East Village where I spent years living during and after college.
Yesterday, I was biking across the bridge in the morning and a woman in front of me had a terrible accident and flipped over her handlebars, scraped up her whole body, and was concussed. Thank god she was wearing her helmet, which split in half upon impact. We placed a bike horizontally across the bike lane so people wouldn't run into us and called an ambulance so she could safely be taken off the bridge. Fortunately, she was okay, but it was very scary.
A positive aspect about the experience was that many people slowed down to see if things were okay. But the disheartening thing was that almost everyone sped by and was super irritated if not downright angry that we were slowing down bike traffic to protect an injured person. I got yelled at and called names, and someone even hit my bike that we placed as a horizontal barricade with their bike. As my colleague Matt said, the one thing that pisses off New Yorkers more than anything else is if you slow down the pace of traffic. He's right. The city has a deeply rooted pace that resists being slowed down, and I saw the dirty side of it yesterday.
Bicycles are an important transportation feature of cities, and I am happy to see that NYC has added more bike lanes and widened them over time. But things are getting unruly and dangerous out there. Pedestrians are frequently struck by riders, and many different types of vehicles are riding in bike lanes at unacceptably high speeds. The city needs to tighten its rules around permissible use and rigorously enforce them to keep the streets safe for pedestrians and riders. Here are some ideas:
If a bike moves fast and doesn't require peddling, it doesn't belong in a bike lane. I've seen mopeds, vespas and massive eBikes that are powered by throttle, not your feet, racing through bike lanes and wreaking havoc. These are effectively motorcycles and don't belong in bike lanes. They also don't belong on sidewalks. They belong in car lanes. I am fine with upright scooters which use a throttle to move so long as they go at a reasonable pace.
To enforce this, police officers should be stationed at both ends of a bridge and confiscate these vehicles as they come off the bike lane. They should sell them at a discount on a marketplace and use the revenue to enhance bike lanes and make citibikes free or subsidized for those that can't afford them. They should do the same thing whenever they see these vehicles in bike lanes or sidewalks on the city streets.
Delivery workers should be permitted to use a throttled ebike, but one that is intended to be ridden on the road, not offroad, and is not a moped. There should be some speed cap on the throttle for these bikes. I do think some carveout for delivery workers is needed, but I am unsure of what it should be. This idea is one that's just off the top of my head.
Bikers who ignore traffic signs should be fined regularly. We need to find a way to disincentivize this behavior. I am guilty of it and cringe every time I do it and navigate around pedestrians who have the right of way.
If you do not pick up and clean your dog's shit off the sidewalk, you go to jail for life.
There's probably a long list of things I'm ignoring here that should be considered. But we need mopeds and super fast and dangerous bikes out of bike lanes and in the car lanes where they belong. Bikes are a blessing to cities, and we need to be explicit about what a bike is. It's time for NYC to clean up its act here.
is building a headless marketplace that can post listings on Farcaster and other networks. Etsy's sellers would post listings of their wares everywhere and anywhere on the internet in the early days. In all these instances, there's an incentive for both the platform and its early users to share broadly.
Sometimes networks can grow by bootstrapping in the physical world. When we started GroupMe we partnered with music festivals so attendees would use the product at large events like Coachella and Bonnaroo. We would even walk around some music festivals and hand out flyers.
"do things that don't scale" like handing out flyers
When Foursquare first emerged restaurants and bars would showcase "check-in" stickers on their windows and the A-frames they stood up on city sidewalks to incentivize foot traffic.
And Facebook famously piggybacked on top of college networks.
In some ways, it's safer to piggyback on top of analog networks than it is digital ones. Unless a security guard prevents you from physically being somewhere, it's a permissionless way to grow. While digital networks offer meaningfully better distribution and faster scale, there is always a gatekeeper that will likely shut you down one day (unless it's a crypto network or open protocol like Farcaster).
Facebook famously throttled Twitter, Twitter and Facebook throttled Instagram, and everyone cut off TikTok. Networks don't like when other networks grow on top of them, especially when they have the same business models of competing for eyeballs or other types of demand (eg housing listings). These networks are becoming more closed and increasingly neurotic about this - Elon Musk deliberately supresses tweets with links in them. This means that the piggyback bootstrap is usually a moment in time arbitrage opportunity of sorts. It should be used as an important early growth tactic to kickstart a flywheel, but not an ongoing dependency. Plan to be cut off entirely, so wisely make the most of your window of opportunity.
As AI tools facilitate entirely new types of media and as new marketplace models emerge, entrepreneurs should be deliberate about what their piggyback opportunities look like. They'll likely require a level of unprecedented creativity - you'll need new ways to hack existing networks. It's something I'm thinking about, and I encourage anyone building something in consumer to come to the table with some crafty ideas.
I love being outdoors in nature. Whether with friends or entirely by myself, it's where I'm happiest.
This summer I got to spend a lot of time outdoors. We stay in the Catskills and there is something very special about being surrounded by green and trees and animals and dirt roads. It's calming and helps to slow things down and put things in perspective.
As the summer was coming to an end and we were preparing to move back to the city I went on one of my favorite bike rides upstate. In Minnewaska State Park, you can bike to a place called Lake Awosting which is only accessible by a 3 mile hike or bike and it's gorgeous. Oftentimes I go there and I have the entire lake to myself and I can sit and read and swim and think.
Then I can go bike a big loop around the park and stop at overlooks like this.
During one of these breaks, I started to think about internet applications, as one is wont to do when in the depths of the great outdoors. I realized that some of my favorite apps, the ones I find most useful and enjoy the most, are ones that emphasize getting outdoors. These include AllTrails, Strava, TrailForks, and Backcountry (for shopping for outdoor gear). One of the neat things about AllTrails and Strava is that networks have popped up around them. A lot of these are owned by private equity, which is a bummer.
I'd love to see more people building things to help the world experience nature more frequently. There is a huge market for people that are passionate about being outdoors, and it's a noble mission to help people experience these things. And as an added benefit, the market for the "outdoors" is huge. We need more entrepreneurs focused on getting more people to touch grass.
My favorite mode of transportation in NYC is the electric citibike. I ride one every morning to and from the USV office. There's a dock on my block in Brooklyn and a dock around the corner from our office. I love my route - it's a straight shot across the Manhattan Bridge where I get to look at the water and feel the breeze in the morning and early evening, and then through the East Village where I spent years living during and after college.
Yesterday, I was biking across the bridge in the morning and a woman in front of me had a terrible accident and flipped over her handlebars, scraped up her whole body, and was concussed. Thank god she was wearing her helmet, which split in half upon impact. We placed a bike horizontally across the bike lane so people wouldn't run into us and called an ambulance so she could safely be taken off the bridge. Fortunately, she was okay, but it was very scary.
A positive aspect about the experience was that many people slowed down to see if things were okay. But the disheartening thing was that almost everyone sped by and was super irritated if not downright angry that we were slowing down bike traffic to protect an injured person. I got yelled at and called names, and someone even hit my bike that we placed as a horizontal barricade with their bike. As my colleague Matt said, the one thing that pisses off New Yorkers more than anything else is if you slow down the pace of traffic. He's right. The city has a deeply rooted pace that resists being slowed down, and I saw the dirty side of it yesterday.
Bicycles are an important transportation feature of cities, and I am happy to see that NYC has added more bike lanes and widened them over time. But things are getting unruly and dangerous out there. Pedestrians are frequently struck by riders, and many different types of vehicles are riding in bike lanes at unacceptably high speeds. The city needs to tighten its rules around permissible use and rigorously enforce them to keep the streets safe for pedestrians and riders. Here are some ideas:
If a bike moves fast and doesn't require peddling, it doesn't belong in a bike lane. I've seen mopeds, vespas and massive eBikes that are powered by throttle, not your feet, racing through bike lanes and wreaking havoc. These are effectively motorcycles and don't belong in bike lanes. They also don't belong on sidewalks. They belong in car lanes. I am fine with upright scooters which use a throttle to move so long as they go at a reasonable pace.
To enforce this, police officers should be stationed at both ends of a bridge and confiscate these vehicles as they come off the bike lane. They should sell them at a discount on a marketplace and use the revenue to enhance bike lanes and make citibikes free or subsidized for those that can't afford them. They should do the same thing whenever they see these vehicles in bike lanes or sidewalks on the city streets.
Delivery workers should be permitted to use a throttled ebike, but one that is intended to be ridden on the road, not offroad, and is not a moped. There should be some speed cap on the throttle for these bikes. I do think some carveout for delivery workers is needed, but I am unsure of what it should be. This idea is one that's just off the top of my head.
Bikers who ignore traffic signs should be fined regularly. We need to find a way to disincentivize this behavior. I am guilty of it and cringe every time I do it and navigate around pedestrians who have the right of way.
If you do not pick up and clean your dog's shit off the sidewalk, you go to jail for life.
There's probably a long list of things I'm ignoring here that should be considered. But we need mopeds and super fast and dangerous bikes out of bike lanes and in the car lanes where they belong. Bikes are a blessing to cities, and we need to be explicit about what a bike is. It's time for NYC to clean up its act here.
