“For an app like that to work you need a network right — it's sort of an empty restaurant problem, classic for social. We were basically trying to do a Web 2.0 idea on top of the phone.”

The Empty-Restaurant Problem Kills Social Apps Before They Start

Wrangle required simultaneous availability of two contacts to work — a classic two-sided coordination problem that makes early growth nearly impossible without a large existing user base or built-in viral loop. Recognising this pattern early is a key pivot signal: if the core value depends on a network that doesn't exist yet, you likely have a distribution problem too big to solve cheaply.