TL;DR: A product must work brilliantly for one person before network effects matter. This is the bootstrap for any network-based business.
Slack worked for one team. Dropbox worked as a single person’s sync tool. Messaging apps worked one-to-one before group chat. The network effects only kick in after the core utility is there.
Many founders confuse this. They build a network and expect adoption to bootstrap the network. But people won’t join an empty network. They’ll join if the product solves a real problem for them alone first. Once that’s true, network effects can compound the value. (cold-start-problem, atomic-network, end-of-billion-user-startup)