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Seeding an Uncertain Technology

Theoretical Economics 2025-06-13 v1

Abstract

I study how a startup with uncertainty over product quality and no knowledge of the underlying diffusion network optimally chooses initial seeds. To ensure widespread adoption when the product is good while minimizing negative perceptions when it is bad, the optimal number of initial seeds should grow logarithmically with network size. When there are agents of different types that govern their connectivity, it is asymptotically optimal to seed agents of a single type: the type that minimizes the marginal cost per probability of making the product go viral. These results rationalize startup behavior in practice.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.10340,
  title  = {Seeding an Uncertain Technology},
  author = {Eric Gao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.10340},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

12 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:12:30.755Z