chicken and egg

What it means

A chicken-and-egg situation is one where two things depend on each other so completely that it's impossible to say which comes first or causes the other. It's used in startup growth (no users without product, no product without users), hiring, and any debate where cause and effect form a loop.

Examples

• Marketplaces face a classic chicken-and-egg problem at launch.
• It's a chicken-and-egg situation: confidence brings success, success brings confidence.
• Hiring without funding is a chicken-and-egg dilemma for early founders.
• Which came first, the demand or the supply? It's chicken and egg.

Where it comes from

From the ancient philosophical question 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?', discussed by the Greek essayist Plutarch in the first century AD. The phrase has been a metaphor for circular causation in English for centuries.

Related idioms