Mastering Product & Distribution

I saw this tweet from the founder of Twitch that said:

First time founders are obsessed with product.

Second time founders are obsessed with distribution.

This hits home. Undoubtedly our biggest struggle when creating companies in the past has been distribution. We spend months and months engineering the perfect product, then when you feel it’s ready, nobody uses it. We try marketing it, but after few successes, we move onto the next idea. This story probably rings true for many founders, and it’s one we see time and time again.

There are many reasons why this cycle exists. First and foremost, the founder is a builder and not a marketer. This makes sense considering a product has to exist in order to market it (or does it?). Second, marketing is difficult. It’s an unsexy problem to solve compared to building and styling your product. There’s a whole world of marketing knowledge and expertise to learn, it feels intimidating, and without intrinsic motivation, that hill may be too high to climb. Third, fear. By showing our product, we open up our work to criticism and rejection. Both being extremely likely for a new product. *The Courage To Be Disliked *has a great section on this. When considering why a friend won’t finish a piece of work, this is how the philosopher responds:

He wants to leave the possibility of “I can do it if I try” open, by not committing to anything. He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it.

It’s easy to make excuses. It’s hard to do the thing and risk hurting your ego. The name of that book is fitting: it takes courage to be disliked. And only through being disliked will you find those who *do *like you and your product. Or at least, learn enough to change your product so that more people do appreciate it.

However, this all relies on the fact that we market our products in the first place. Doing those aforementioned things is difficult while convincing yourself that if only we had X feature… is easy. Except no product will succeed without distribution. So unfortunately, we must overcome this challenge or let our product die. Distribution is key.

Considering this is key, so my co-founder and I put together a simple plan. I focus on product, he focuses on distribution. Outlining the separation of concerns, while also enabling and encouraging collaboration, is our recipe for success.