Business · Similar reads
Books like The Cold Start Problem
The best books like The Cold Start Problem are Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, and The Lean Startup. The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen is about network effects, growth, product strategy. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
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Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh · Business
Blitzscaling is Reid Hoffman's argument that certain markets — primarily those with strong network effects and winner-take-most dynamics — reward companies that prioritize speed of growth over efficiency, even at the cost of significant operational risk.
Shares network effects and growth with The Cold Start Problem.
Read the summary → - Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
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Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Nir Eyal · Business
Hooked is Nir Eyal's framework for designing products that people return to without external prompting.
A kindred business read.
Read the summary → - The Lean Startup
03
Eric Ries · Business
The Lean Startup is Eric Ries's argument that the biggest cause of startup failure is not building the wrong product — it's spending months or years building something before finding out whether anyone wants it.
A kindred business read.
Read the summary →
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Peter Thiel · Business
Zero to One began as notes from a Stanford course Thiel taught on startups in 2012, assembled into a book with co-author Blake Masters.
Both dig into startups.
Read the summary → - Crossing the Chasm
05
Geoffrey A. Moore · Business
Crossing the Chasm is Geoffrey Moore's analysis of why so many technology companies succeed with early adopters and then stall before reaching mainstream customers.
Shares product strategy and startups with The Cold Start Problem.
Read the summary → - Hacking Growth
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Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown · Business
Hacking Growth is Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown's guide to building a growth function — an organizationally distinct, cross-functional team focused on finding and exploiting opportunities to accelerate customer acquisition, retention, and revenue.
Shares growth and product strategy with The Cold Start Problem.
Read the summary → - Product-Led Growth
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Wes Bush · Business
Product-Led Growth is Wes Bush's guide to a go-to-market strategy in which the product itself is the primary vehicle for customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion — rather than sales and marketing teams that generate leads and hand them to the product.
Shares growth and product strategy with The Cold Start Problem.
Read the summary → - Growth Hacker Marketing
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Ryan Holiday · Business
Growth Hacker Marketing is Ryan Holiday's short, accessible introduction to a marketing philosophy that emerged from Silicon Valley startups in the early 2010s.
Shares growth and startups with The Cold Start Problem.
Read the summary → - Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
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Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares · Business
Traction is Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares's systematic guide to customer acquisition for startups.
Shares growth and startups with The Cold Start Problem.
Read the summary → - Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love
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Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love
Anthony Kennada · Business
Category Creation is Anthony Kennada's account of how Gainsight, where he served as chief marketing officer, built the customer success management category from scratch — and the broader argument that this approach to marketing, creating a new market category rather than competing within an existing one, produces compounding advantages that conventional brand-building rarely matches.
Both dig into growth.
Read the summary → - Competing Against Luck
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Clayton M. Christensen · Business
Competing Against Luck is Clayton Christensen's most complete development of the Jobs to Be Done framework, which he introduced briefly in The Innovator's Solution.
Both dig into product strategy.
Read the summary → - Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
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Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace · Business
Creativity, Inc.
Both dig into startups.
Read the summary →
Books like The Cold Start Problem: quick answers
What are the best books like The Cold Start Problem?
The best books like The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen are Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Cold Start Problem, such as network effects, growth, product strategy.
What should I read after The Cold Start Problem?
A natural next read after The Cold Start Problem is Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh. Shares network effects and growth with The Cold Start Problem. Other strong choices are Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel.
What books are similar to The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen?
The Cold Start Problem centers on network effects, growth, product strategy. Books with a similar feel include Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore, Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.