One equation to rule all startups (and other stuff too)

The propagation of a product, an idea, or a disease, follows a well-defined trend. For startuppers, understanding it gives an edge when working to maximize growth.

This article has been written in collaboration with Dimitri Bozovic, who has written extensively about Spotify’s and Snapchat’s valuations. He also happens to be my brother.

Check out the four charts below. Not looking at the axes, the curves are eerily similar, aren’t they? What are they?

You just saw, from left to right:

1. the number of coronavirus cases in Switzerland since the first infection
2. the number of monthly active users of Twitter from 2010 to 2018
3. the number of views of Despacito in the year after the video’s release
4. the proportion of US households owning a microwave from the 1960s to the 1990s

Let’s stack them, normalized, just to see how similar they are: