How we can acquire new prospects by leveraging our existing network of customers.
June 2, 2023
In Andrew Chen’s book The Cold Start Problem, he breaks the network effect into three parts: engagement, acquisition, and economize. At Shop Local, we rely on the network effect and its three parts. I feel that we’re succeeding in terms of engagement but need improvement in acquisition.
Engagement
We use the 64,000 products in our Syncing service to engage 1,200 our retail clients. We email them new intros, price updates, archived items for these synced products. Once they ...
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At the Dallas trade show this week, I’ll be sporting our new Shop Local t-shirt. In flight to the show, I’ll be reading how network effects help businesses, including retail shops. Indie shops and network effects go hand in hand. Retailers can effectively grow via network programs, including Bridge’s Product Syncing service and referral and affiliate programs. To learn how networks can help your business, I recommend picking up a copy of The Cold ...
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In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects:
The acquisition effect
The engagement effect
The monetization effect
In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others. Bridge didn’t do ...
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In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon, who plays a handsome MIT janitor moonlighting as a math savant (can one say, “Hollywood career vehicle”?), woos a young lady (played by the actress Minnie Driver) by outmaneuvering a few competing, obnoxious cads. When Damon’s character gets the girl's telephone number, he proudly shows it to the other guys and boasts, with his South Boston access, “How 'bout ‘dem apples?” I imagine Tim Cook imitating this...
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When I flew home yesterday from Charleston, while most people were seeking relief from their sunburns and reminiscing about their vacations, I was delving into The Wall St. Journal’s profile on Tracy Britt Cool, an ex- Berkshire Hathaway star. Mrs. Cool’s new company Kanbrick invests in businesses with $10m - $50m in revenue. What does Mrs. Cool look for when investing in a company? People and moats.
At Bridge, we’re reading Jim Collins’ Beyond ...
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When I was 24-years old, a market research company sent me to Philadelphia to survey potential users about a new offering from General Electric Finance. Your first question may be: "Wait, Jason was once 24?" Your second may be: "GE had a consumer finance arm?" Yes, and yes. GE was once a conglomerate with its hands in many industries, from television to nuclear reactors to jet engines. GE, like Toshiba and Johnson & Johnson, has since shrunk. But the era of the ...
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