Networks Can Grow Naturally, But Don't Start Naturally

On the topic of network effect businesses, where the value for later users - and the ease of engaging them - is compounded as the network grows, teams tend to think that such networks will grow organically. They don't.

The amount of non-scalable, manual effort required to engage customers enough to generate such elusive “network effects” is almost always underestimated. Have observed many examples. Uber had to sign up drivers manually and often through dispatch services, and pay the first drivers to sit idle roadside before there was demand. Pinterest had early meetups and on-the-ground efforts to engage users and I recall early team members emailing with potential users directly to spread word. For Behance, we manually built the portfolios for our first 100 members back in 2007 (the content needed to look good and be plentiful for others to want to participate - we needed to do it ourselves), along with a hundred other little tricks. Now I am watching Prefer run “Soloist Collective” events to engage independent professionals in chapters popping up around the country.

We like to pontificate about strategy, refine design, A/B test our products and marketing, and hide behind our screens to build digital products so powerful that they spread “naturally.” As if anything new or remotely disruptive ever happened naturally!

“Build it and they will come” does not work. Ironically, the greatest network effects are kicked off in remarkably old school “door by door” unscalable ways. Always be selling, always be doing whatever your version of door to door is, and don’t expect growth to start naturally.