Solved the "chicken or the egg" problem

The app requires crowd-sourced status reports. In the first season, there wasn't much of a crowd using the app so there weren't many reports, which made the app pretty useless. The app had a "chicken or the egg" problem.

In the 2nd season of the app being live, after a more serious marketing push, the app has a lot more people using it to get up-to-date lift and slope reports. And some users have started consistently contributing reports. Which solves the "chicken or the egg" problem.

How I've managed to solve the problem:

1. Fake it till you make it / Dog-fooding: at the start of the season I was the main contributor. I'd report problems at the start of the day, mostly closed lifts and slopes. These are the most important types of reports and I could just echo the official reports from the official channels.

2. Marketing push: more facebook/instagram ads with a wider demographic. Since the app had at least some daily reports (added by myself), I could start getting more users, which would not instantly leave because the app was empty.

3. Nudging users to contribute: if there weren't any recent reports, the app would show on the home screen a message informing them that they can contribute to the benefit of all other users. There was also a call to action next to the message.

And that seems to have been enough.
Have some useful content. Show it to people. Encourage people to add content.