Conceptually, understanding that a product has a critical threshold is helpful, but practically speaking, what do you do with this metric? For new products, it’s important to have a hypothesis for the size of your network even before you begin. Communication apps can be 1:1, so the network is small, and you can plan accordingly. Contrast that to products that are highly asymmetrical, with content creators and viewers, or marketplaces with buyers and sellers—these are likely to require a much bigger number to hit the threshold, and require a much bigger effort to get started. The size of an
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