“We had the same problem early at Honey: people who installed the extension loved it, but nobody was searching for automatic coupon finder. Our breakthrough came when we stopped trying to explain the product and started paying to promote a Business Insider listicle we happened to be mentioned in, because third-party credibility did what our landing page couldn't.”
“I know that silence after launch. With ShortVibe, I am trying to seed small groups at once, because a few people watching together cross-fertilizes better than a demo sent into the void.”
“With Halfway, I watched 150 couples find it useful before a single person had heard of it, and the only thing that moved the needle was getting it into one conversation where the right people already talk. Distribution is the product you forgot to build.”
“I launched my first consumer app to 125 users and 400 generations with zero marketing spend, and the only thing that made it feel real was posting the build in public. Distribution is the product now, especially in AI where the build is getting cheap and fast.”
“The particular here is Patreon's launch: 100 creators Jack contacted all turned them down, so they launched with just three people and Jack's campaign took off first. That maps directly onto built something people like, but almost nobody knows it exists — the problem wasn't the product, it was that the right people hadn't seen it work yet.”
“I have been there: at Fiber we had an ecommerce app people loved once they found it, but discovery was the whole game. The product isn't the hard part anymore; distribution is. I'd stop polishing and start figuring out where your ideal users already gather, then embed yourself there shamelessly.”
“I spent months building The Organic Learner and The Connected Employee thinking the product would speak for itself, but the people who needed it most were not the ones scrolling LinkedIn. We had to stop polishing the course and start showing up where our audience already was, with language they actually used.”
“I built Muso Database to 130,000 drummers and still almost nobody outside that world knew my name. The product worked, but I spent too long polishing the thing and not enough making noise about it. If people like what you built, your next job is distribution, not another feature.”