How to Solve Cold Start Problem for Impact Entrepreneurs

Although shipping a product or service has become easier to build, it remains difficult to launch and scale them.

This is especially true for community-led ventures targeting to change the way people behave. Many impact entrepreneurs either need to build a community or recruit a group of socially conscious consumers to pick their alternative, which makes a cold start problem even a bigger challenge, but there is a fix.

While the term refers to a mechanical problem when it is harder to start an engine when it is cold, for the products it’s harder to get momentum when there are no existing users.

These 3 tricks might help you to overcome the cold start problem.

Focus on a niche market

It is nearly impossible to talk about growth and virality from a metrics-oriented perspective without a strong baseline of engagement. How to build one, create your niche or focus on a very niche market. Just like an atomic essay, atomic markets or

Do things that won’t scale

The value of your products doesn’t just increase as more users use them, but more use cases emerge and engagement increases. To overcome this, Chen recommends focusing on the small percentage of users whose participation creates disproportionate value. This is another way of doing things that don’t scale.

Ship a better product

Just like Tesla. Tesla is competing against in 100-year-old automobile industry. But the product offering is so good that it disrupts the market. Now company positions the Roadster as an all-electric vehicle, the quickest car in the world, with record-setting acceleration, range, and performance — with a great design.