As Paul saw it, the projections, the spreadsheets, the grand marketing plans were all secondary. First, you had to build something that a tiny cohort… - Reid Hoffman

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As Paul saw it, the projections, the spreadsheets, the grand marketing plans were all secondary. First, you had to build something that a tiny cohort of users would love. If they loved it, presumably millions of others would, too. And since love tends to be shared, your product or service would have the best kind of marketing, the kind money couldn’t buy — and it would grow and grow. Paul’s point was that in order to build something Brian’s core user would truly love, he needed to meet them where they live — literally. He had to talk to them, listen to them, watch them, and try his best to understand them. And as Paul told Brian, this was the moment to seize that opportunity. “It’s the only time,” Paul said, “you’ll ever be small enough that you can meet all your customers, get to know them — and make something directly for them.” In 2013, Paul would codify this advice in his famous essay “Do Things That Don’t Scale,” which also serves as #6 of my Counterintuitive Rules of Blitzscaling.

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Alternative Names: Reid Garrett Hoffman Reid G. Hoffman
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Additional quotes by Reid Hoffman

Viral” distribution occurs when the users of a product bring more users, and those users bring additional users, and so on, much like an infectious virus spreads from host to host. Virality can either be organic — occurring during the course of normal usage of the product — or incentivized by some kind of reward.

One of the reasons businesses tend to rely on blitzscaling is that speed is one of the primary advantages they hold vis-à-vis large companies. Start-ups can act quickly to capitalize on the new opportunities created by technological advances. If they dawdle and proceed at the same pace as a big company, they’re fighting on an even playing field, which means that the big company’s resources will likely confer massive advantage.

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