Title: Both Reddit and HN were seeded by people who read your essays (I was there for both).<p>How would you have advised "The Muffins" to overcome the chicken and egg problem without the assistance of your audience and YC's press attention?<p>I know they simulated user activity using fake accounts to overcome the "ghost town" effect. How could they have attracted the first critical few thousand users without leveraging an existing audience?<p>From your office hours talk I suspect you may suggest finding an especially enthusiastic niche audience at first. Certainly Reddit was all startup/hackers.<p>The problem is: how do you actually go about getting that targeted audience on the site in big enough numbers to jump-start the virtuous cycle?<p>(I'm <i>really</i> curious to hear PG's answer, but also love input from others as well.)
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