The world can often seem chaotic but underneath that apparent complexity, there's actually some wonderful, simple math. And once you see it and understand it, the world gets calmer and you can follow that math to your destination.

If you're going to be spending your life's energy building a startup, it's going to take 100% of your effort. You're trying to defend the business area that you've carved out. You might as well be working on a business that has network effects because then you'll have a shot at going the distance and making a real impact in the world and creating true value for your employees, for your investors and for your whole network.

Over the last 20 years, we've built 10 companies that have exited for over $10 billion. We've also invested in hundreds of companies. Most of which also had network effects. Companies you've heard of like Lyft, and DoorDash and Patreon, and Goodreads that used network effects to grow and build their defensibility and went on to great success. We've seen the failures and the successes. We've seen the tactics and the details of what it takes to grow these network effects. And with all of that company building, what we noticed was that when the companies had real network effects, their success was 10x, 20x, 30x what companies were when they didn't have network effects. It was the most important factor in determining what would be a successful startup and what wasn't.

In fact, between 2012 and 2018, we studied it and noticed the math is that 70% of all the value created in the technology sector is created by companies with network effects. And only 30% was created by companies without network effects. Once we saw the network effects playing out in these startups, it was clear to us that they were also playing out and how our lives went, and how politics was going and how economics actually worked. We started seeing this everywhere. Once we saw it and understood it, we couldn't unsee it. Once you learn this way of seeing, you will not be able to unsee it. You will see these patterns everywhere. And the world that looks kind of chaotic on the surface is actually not as chaotic. It's actually quite understandable once you understand the network principles.

We're going to teach you about the tactics and the nuances, all the different types of network effects. But the fundamental idea about network effects is that the more users a product has, the more value every user gets from that product. That's the kernel of the idea of network effects. Now, how that blossoms and flowers in its multiplicity of expressions, you will learn in this Masterclass.