The power of catalyst combinations

Now here's where things get really interesting. The cool thing about catalysts is that while flywheel catalysts are the unicorn we're looking for, they may be dependent on catalyst boosters to be viable. And more importantly, you can have multiple catalysts working together, and when they combine, the effect is exponential rather than additive.

Think about a market filled with incumbents, all lacking not only a free pricing offer, but also a flywheel built into the DNA of their business. If a challenger emerges that not only offers a free pricing model, but also a network effects dynamic… well, those incumbents better watch out.

Slack demonstrates this beautifully. They had a two-sided network effect where teams using Slack internally would naturally communicate with external partners, exposing those partners to Slack and often leading to adoption. But this network effect was amplified by their freemium model, which removed friction for new teams to try the product. The combination created exponential growth that neither catalyst could've achieved alone.

The framework is pretty simple. The stronger your foundational alignment and the more catalysts, particularly flywheel catalysts, you have, the stronger the conditions for breakout growth and defensibility.