A framework for starting and scaling products that live or die by network effects — marketplaces, social apps, messaging, and collaboration tools — distilled from Andrew Chen's The Cold Start Problem. Use it to launch products that are worthless until other users show up, to sequence growth network by network, and to navigate the five stages: the cold start, the tipping point, escape velocity, hitting the ceiling, and the moat.
Cold Start Problem is a community-contributed Claude Code skill in the tools-misc sub-category. It ships as a SKILL.md file that Claude Code auto-discovers under ~/.claude/skills/cold-start-problem/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.
When to invoke it: Use when the user mentions "network effects", "chicken and egg", "cold start", "two-sided marketplace", "atomic network", "hard side", "liquidity", "critical mass", "invite-only launch", or "come for the tool stay for the network". Also trigger when launching a marketplace, social, or collaboration product that is worthless without other users, deciding launch sequencing and seeding tactics, or diagnosing stalled network growth or degradation at scale.
The Cold Start Problem Claude Code skill is built for developers, power users, and teams automating repetitive workflows and improving developer experience. It's part of ClaudSkills (also referred to as Claude Skills or Claude Code Skills) — the open community-curated registry of 146,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/cold-start-problem curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/cold-start-problem/SKILL.md \ -o ~/.claude/skills/cold-start-problem/SKILL.md
Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/cold-start-problem/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.
Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/cold-start-problem/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\cold-start-problem\SKILL.md on Windows. See the full install guide for step-by-step instructions.
Open @claudskills_bot on Telegram, tap Open Desktop App, and the desktop app installs this skill for you. Or share the bot link with a colleague — they get the same one-tap install. Learn more →
The ClaudSkills desktop app installs any skill directly into ~/.claude/skills/ with one click — no terminal required. Pro starts at $9/mo or $149 lifetime.
For the full experience including quality scoring and one-click install features for each skill — upgrade to Pro.
SKILL.md from the source repository to ~/.claude/skills/cold-start-problem/SKILL.md and restart Claude Code. Both flows are detailed at claudskills.com/install/.SKILL.md file that lives under ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ and tells the Claude Code CLI agent how to perform a specific task (instructions, prompts, allowed tools). Skills are auto-discovered at session start. Cold Start Problem is one of 67,000+ skills indexed in the open ClaudSkills catalog, classified under the Dev Tools category. Learn more at /learn/what-is-a-claude-skill/.If you reference this skill in a blog post, paper, or documentation, you can cite it as:
@misc{cold-start-problem-2026,
author = {wondelai},
title = {Cold Start Problem [Claude Code skill]},
year = {2026},
publisher = {ClaudSkills},
url = {https://claudskills.com/skills/cold-start-problem/}
}Grade A · scanned 2026-07-06 — free static scan against the OWASP Agentic Skills Top 10.
No risk patterns were found in any of the ten OWASP-aligned categories. How grading works ›
Browse all Dev Tools skills in the ClaudSkills registry, or explore these other picks from the same category:
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SKILL.md files, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic.