Hey Andrew - yeah the 'cold start' problem is a common one. And even though we are a software company, I still believe that software is only 50% at maximum of the equation. The rest is up to the site managers to have great content, commit to building a great community by being present both in their own comment discussion and others around the web (in a non-spammy way of course) and set the tone upfront and often about what the norms are (per an earlier comment I made).

Nonetheless, I do believe Disqus gives you a big leg up, not just because of all the features, but mainly because of the fact that it's the largest commenting platform on the web and is interconnected, so it makes it much easier for your site and your content to be discovered by the other hundreds of millions of users who use Disqus every month. In fact in the new Disqus, even more discovery and cross-pollination is a big area of focus as you'll start to see more of on our blog (http://blog.disqus.com).