The Cold Start Problem

I'm deep into the book by Andrew Chen and I'm wondering how do tech founders successfully monetize and build a network at the same time? Is there such a thing as a social, video conferencing, messaging, or any app that relies on network effects being profitable within the first 3 years? How can one of these apps boot strap and self fund? I've been considering profit share to get the hard side network buy in and support on miingl. Do you believe that if content creators can gain from the profit that they would be willing to pay for a subscription and forgo short term earnings? Lots of questions I know, but this seems to be the most important subject in my world at this time.