The magnitude of the cold start problem is to some degree an artifact of the current laws of physics of apps.

1) Making an app is hard.

2) Distributing it to the right user at the right time is expensive.

3) When users start with a new app, they start from nothing.

4) Users have to distrust new experiences until they earn their trust, because the experiences can do anything with data they have access to.

5) The only viable business model for consumers is ads.

But if you were to have an alternate set of physics that changed some or all of these, you might have a significantly less strong cold start problem.