The world’s most powerful technology companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are utilizing network effects. Network effects provide a path for fledgling products to break through, attracting new users through viral growth and word of mouth. They have a critical role to play in today’s technology landscape, yet most entrepreneurs still lack the vocabulary and context to describe them. In The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen translates both his firsthand experiences at Uber and interviews with successful and not-so-successful teams into systematic frameworks that can be applied across products and industries. Readers will come to understand what makes winning networks successful, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are virally important in an age where technology is sweeping through every industry.