Product is important, but distribution is everything.
For years, I nodded at it. I agreed with it. I even quoted it. But I didn’t feel it. Not in a way that would change how I think, act, or invest.
Because when we say product, we usually mean apps, features, hardware, or roadmaps. But the word is much bigger than that. A product can be digital, physical, intellectual, or even a service. Whatever it is, if it needs users, customers, attention, or adoption, distribution will decide its destiny.
Build it.
Share it.
Scale it.
Looks obvious. Sounds neat. But the moment you slow down… the simplicity cracks.
Distribution is not one thing
It changes based on what you sell and how value moves.
Founders of physical products struggle to understand distribution in digital products because there is no shelf, no warehouse, no retailer, no freight, no inventory, no last-mile.
Digital founders struggle with physical distribution because funnels and landing pages don’t work for physical products.
And then there are businesses like Uber, where distribution isn’t about selling a product at all. It’s about balancing two distributions simultaneously: riders and drivers.
- No drivers → no rides.
- No riders → no reason for drivers.
- Distribution becomes a live equilibrium, not a pipeline.
And that’s where even more questions deeper:
- Is Uber’s distribution supply acquisition or demand generation?
- Is the “product” the app, the ride, or the marketplace network itself?
- Is pricing a feature, a strategy, or a distribution lever?
- Is surge pricing monetization or a real-time distribution correction?
The deeper I go, the less I believe distribution has a single definition at all.
I have more questions than answers.
And so the real questions start showing up
What exactly is distribution made of?
Is GTM just a distribution renamed?
Where does marketing stop and sales begin?
Who owns distribution inside a company?
Why do average products with strong distribution win, while great products with weak distribution vanish?
If distribution is the real moat, why don’t we study it the way we study product, design, coding, or finance?
Maybe the quote is correct. But the quote is not the lesson. The quote is noise until the framework makes it real. I’m still exploring and building the mental map. And here’s the honest part: Until I understand distribution deeply, I will keep recognizing it only in hindsight when the winners are already visible.
As an investor, distribution tells me whether a company will succeed.
As a founder, distribution decides whether I will
That’s why this isn’t just “nice to know.” It’s a capability I need to internalize. Because product may start the story but distribution decides the ending.