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Comment by Angostura | Hacker News Reader

> He said a startup is like a magnet. The more users you attract, the more powerful your magnet becomes.

It doesn't matter what I swap out for 'users' in this analogy, I can't make it make sense. It sounds impressive though.

network effects. If you are a marketplace or service you need both sides ramping up fast- the more users you get the more valuable it becomes and easier to attract more and so on.

...and this is like a magnet.... how?

Might be something like adding an iron core to your magnet? Not sure, the analogy is sketchy at best.

One talk I like to give at college campuses is such: A startup is like the obscure 1990's Playstation game Katamari Damacy. You start off with a small magic ball about the size of a pencil eraser. You can pick up anything smaller than you, but if you try to pick up something too big, you bounce off and get smaller. You start picking up paperclips and chess pieces, and then by the end of the game (spoiler alert) you end up picking up skyscrapers and continents and such.

It's like that. You start with bringing your cofounders together. Then you add your first customers. Then maybe you raise a little bit of friends and family money, and that lets you put more money into customer acquisition, which gets you more cofounders, which lets you get more revenue to hire a few more people, and raise more money, and so on.

So startups are like katamari damacy, and if you win, you end up picking up an entire industry.

Upvoting this because of the Katamari Damacy shout out!

Unrelated, but did you ever play Nobi Nobi Boy from the same creator?

Yes, a long time ago — I forgot what it was called but thanks for the reminder! My 15 mo old at home will love it!

Hahah! Yes he will. Happy to help.

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