#10: a16z General Partner Andrew Chen on The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects

Welcome to another episode of The Coral Capital Podcast, a show about startups, technology, and venture capital with a focus on Japan and Asia.

In this episode we chat with Andrew Chen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he invests in games, AR/VR, metaverse, and consumer tech startups. He is on the boards of Clubhouse, Substack, Z League, Sleeper, Snackpass, All Day Kitchens, Sandbox VR, Reforge, Maven, Practice, and others.

He is a prolific writer on user growth, metrics, and network effects at andrewchen.com and has been cited on Wired, WSJ, and The New York Times.

In this episode we discuss a broad range of topics focused on his book, The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects, which was just published in Japanese. We cover:

• What motivated Andrew to write a book on “network effects”
• The power of network effects and and real-world examples
• Why it’s critical to identify the “hard side” of a network
• How Tinder solved the cold start problem
• Why Google+ didn’t take off despite enormous distribution channels
• What are the key metrics that signal network effects
• What was going on behind the scenes when Clubhouse went viral

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