I assume that would also translate into far less users a year from now
That's the mistake. The number of users you get long term depends more on the "interest rate" than the size of the initial seed. E.g. Google.
That's the mistake. The number of users you get long term depends more on the "interest rate" than the size of the initial seed. E.g. Google.
There's also a more dangerous factor to consider: The number of users of a startup is far more visible than its growth rate, so it's entirely possible that great startups end up shutting down due to a disappointing apparent lack of traction when -- if they had stayed around for longer -- their inherent advantages would have produced enough growth to make them wildly successful. Even if we suppose that the ultimate potential of a business is entirely dependent on the inherent quality of the product or service it produces -- which would be rather stretching credulity -- then the external factors of marketing and luck still have a significant impact on whether companies remain in existence long enough to reach their potential.
And while growth rate is not in itself visible, what drives it is something that's usually even more visible than the size of the user base: the quality of the product.
I'm not convinced. Most startup founders think that their products are the greatest thing since sliced bread, but they're often also aware that they are biassed. How many startup founders haven't at some point been disappointed by the size of their user base and said to themselves "gee, I think what I'm doing is really cool, but maybe the market for this isn't as big as I thought it was"?
Maybe we can call this resume-viral: products that are passed around by virtue of become recognizable bullet items on resumes.