Building Got Easier. Distribution Got Harder.
It has never been easier to build software.
A small team can now do things that used to require designers, developers, infrastructure work and weeks of coordination.
Sometimes one person can get surprisingly far.
That’s exciting.
But it creates another problem:
If everyone can build faster, being able to build is no longer enough to get attention.
The bottleneck moves.
From production to distribution.
Shipping used to be the impressive part
A few years ago, saying:
“I built and launched this product myself.”
was already interesting.
Now timelines are full of:
- built this in a weekend
- shipped an MVP in a day
- generated this with AI
- launched another SaaS
The tools genuinely are getting better.
But the easier building becomes, the more products people have to choose from.
So the question changes from:
Can you build it?
to:
Why should anyone care?
Distribution isn’t just posting links
I think this is where a lot of founders get frustrated.
They spend weeks building.
Then launch day arrives.
They post the link in a few places.
Nothing happens.
And distribution starts feeling like some mysterious skill separate from product building.
But I’m starting to think good distribution often looks much less like promotion.
It looks like participation.
Answering questions.
Sharing things you learned.
Explaining mistakes.
Publishing useful research.
Helping someone solve a problem even when they never click your product.
That is slower than dropping a link.
But it also creates something a link alone can’t create:
trust.
Community changes the relationship
I’ve been spending more time in founder and builder communities recently.
One thing becomes obvious very quickly.
People can tell when someone only arrived to promote something.
And they can also tell when someone is genuinely part of the conversation.
The second approach takes longer.
You post.
Someone disagrees.
You respond.
Someone asks a question.
That question turns into another discussion.
Eventually people recognize the topics you keep talking about.
That feels much more valuable than one post getting a temporary spike in clicks.
Because distribution starts becoming a relationship instead of an event.
Useful content compounds better than announcements
This is something we’re also experimenting with around built.new.
I’m involved with the project.
Instead of only talking about the product, we’ve been trying to publish useful material around the problems people already have.
Comparisons.
Tests.
Lessons from other builders.
Practical guides.
Research.
We’ve been collecting that work on built.new Learn.
The idea is simple:
If someone learns something useful before they ever use the product, that relationship starts differently.
You’re not asking for attention first.
You’re earning some of it.
AI probably makes this more important
AI can help generate:
landing pages,
emails,
posts,
videos,
code,
designs.
So content itself is getting cheaper too.
That means simply producing more probably won’t be enough.
The valuable part becomes:
having something worth saying.
A real observation.
A useful experiment.
A mistake.
A result.
A strong opinion backed by experience.
A conversation that continues after the post.
AI can accelerate the output.
It can’t manufacture genuine relevance.
Maybe distribution is part of the product now
I used to think about the process like this:
build → launch → market
Now I think it’s closer to:
talk → learn → build → share → listen → improve
The conversations before the build affect the product.
The conversations after launch affect the roadmap.
The content brings new people into those conversations.
Everything starts feeding everything else.
So while building software is becoming dramatically easier, I’m not convinced building a company is.
The difficult part is simply moving somewhere else.
And right now, I think a lot of that difficulty sits in earning attention and building trust.
For people building something today:
What’s harder for you right now — building the product or getting the right people to care about it?
Top comments (4)
The participation framing matches what we are seeing from the other side. We shipped a product in about five weeks and spent the next three learning that a link posted from a two-week-old account is invisible on every platform we tried, and that the same platforms shadow-drop or suspend when the posting cadence looks automated. The only channel that gave us real distribution without an audience was YouTube Shorts, because the algorithm does not care how old the account is. Everything else needed the slow version you describe: turn up, answer things, be recognisable before you ask for anything.
That’s a really useful point.
“Be recognizable before you ask for anything” feels like a very accurate description of how most channels work now.
The YouTube Shorts contrast is interesting too — some platforms reward existing trust, while others reward format first.
The slow version is frustrating, but I’m starting to think it creates much better signal than a random spike.
Agree on participation over announcements. One habit that made the difference for me: put the whole answer in the thread, not a teaser that needs a click. If someone asks why their import fails, the reply names the likely cause and the fix, right there. People remember who solved their problem, and the profile click happens on its own if they care.
The other thing worth tracking is which of your replies get replies back. It's a much faster signal than traffic for figuring out which topics you actually have something to say about, and it tells you what the next long post should be.
Completely agree.
Putting the full answer in the thread is probably one of the biggest mindset shifts. It makes the interaction useful even if nobody clicks.
And your point about tracking which replies get replies back is great — that feels like a much faster signal than traffic for figuring out which topics are worth developing further.