Ecosystems get to critical mass when they start building themselves.
- Ecosystems get to critical mass when they start building themselves.
- That is, the fire catches and becomes a self-sustaining flame.
- If the ecosystem isn't fundamentally better than more established alternatives, then they never catch up.
- Even with billions of dollars of investment, it's sometimes not possible to get to the critical mass point.
- But if the ecosystem is fundamentally better in some novel way, if it has no alternatives, then sometimes it can get to critical mass at a surprisingly low bar.
- You need:
- 1) a core that is valuable to a subset of the market on its own
- 2) a boundary gradient that pulls in more and more people over time.
- The boundary gradient can be a network effect, or it can be as simple as a thing that is values aligned, that people want to want.