[light_triad]

Good points but I think you're talking about 3 different concepts:

- Network effect: does the product get better with more users?

- Viral growth: does each user bring more users?

- PMF: is there a correspondence between the market, problem and solution that results in market pull?

You can have PMF without the other 2, which is not as strong. You can also have PMF for a niche that never grows to a mass market or have decent sales without PMF. Agreed having to buy your traffic and needing to go through the FAANG toll booth every time you want to access your audience is a problem.

[gizmo]

You can't grow to 10s or 100s of millions of users without some kind of network effect or viral loop. It's pretty much impossible.

[mnemonicsloth]

McDonald's. Disney. Walmart. Kroger. Comcast. Verizon.

And many more who sell crops, chemicals, power, machine parts, cars, concrete...

Many companies have billions of customers and no trace of lock-in or virality at all. You might want to shift your perspective a little and remember that there is a world outside of Silicon Valley.

[zht]

Comcast and Verizon have no lock-in?

[mnemonicsloth]

Verizon competes with T-Mobile and AT&T. Comcast competes with a different arm of AT&T, Google Fiber, various older satellite internet services and now Starlink.

Outside the US, broadband providers are still huge but differences in regulation mean there are five or six of them in most markets.

Overall, I think my point still stands: claiming that you can't build a giant company without Silicon Valley's growth formula is ridiculously narrow. The vast majority of big companies are built by other methods.