Indie founder: 5 lectures lifted signups from 23 to 120; lecture 6 covers network effects
richardreis · x · 2026-10-20
richardreis shares Lecture 6 of his startup course: building network effects to solve the cold start problem. Applying the first five lectures grew his product from 1,200 visitors/23 signups to 1,600/120. The lecture covers Sarnoff, Metcalfe and Reed's laws, why network effects aren't virality, five categories of network effects, and six cold-start steps (start single-player, bootstrap an atomic network, define critical mass, follow natural clusters), applied to his own Mental Math Pro and BetterLink.