“Every company is its own work of art, and the founder is the artist.” – James Currier
James Currier (@JamesCurrier) is General Partner of NFX, an early stage VC firm with a focus on startups with potential for network effects. Before founding NFX, James co-founded four successful companies: Tickle (acquired by Monster), Wonderhill (merged with Kabam), IronPearl (acquired by PayPal), and Jiff (merged with Castlight).
To listen to James Currier’s bonus interview and learn more about his habits and inspirations, click here.
For more, explore the transcript of this episode.
Chapters in Part 1 of this interview:
- James’ background and journey to NFX
- Defining network effects and why they are so powerful
- Virality vs. network effects
- Examples of businesses with network effects
- Tweaking rules and systems to take advantage of network effects
- Networks effects as a business strategy
- Investing in network effects businesses
- Advice for founders
Links from Part 1
- NFX Essays on network effects
- Exeter
- Princeton
- Harvard Business School
- Battery Ventures
- Oracle
- Craigslist
- Microsoft
- Apple
- eBay
- Chatroulette
- Michael Birch
- Darius Contractor
- Uber
- Quickbooks
- Photoshop
- Figma
- Sketch
- Scott Cook
- David Attenborough
- Visa
- Mastercard
- Waze
- Tesla
- Comcast
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Facebook Messenger
- Ethereum
- Amazon Marketplace
- David Marcus
- Stan Chudnovsky
- Pete Flint
- Buy now pay later in Brazil
- Signal
- BriefLink
- DocSend
- NFX Guild
- Increasing Returns and the New World of Business – HBR
- AT&T
- Strategies for Two-Sided Markets – HBR
Terminology
- Network effects
- SaaS (Software as a service)
- SMB (Server message block)
- KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
- CAC (Customer acquisition cost)
- LTV (Loan-to-Value ratio)
- Keiretsu
Learn More About This Topic
Harvard Business School offers this introduction to network effects with examples and how they affect pricing and strategy.
The Network Effects Manual: 13 Different Network Effects
NFX has put together a list of 13 (and counting) types of network effects and their playbooks.
They Dynamics of Network Effects
Andreessen Horowitz has created a great summary of network effects and the three things to pay attention to in your own company to take advantage of network effects.
This Twitter thread from Andrew Chen is a crowdsourced list of books about products with network effects.
Your Life is Driven by Network Effects
James noted that this essay guided his own son’s choice of schools; it’s an excellent application of network effects into everyday life.
