Shipping products feels dramatically easier now.
Between AI coding tools, templates, and browser-side tooling, I can build and deploy things faster than ever.
But distribution feels harder.
Not technically harder.
Semantically harder.
A lot of the work now is:
- understanding how users actually search
- matching workflows instead of technical terms
- figuring out where intent really exists
- building trust before distribution channels suppress you
Building became compressed.
Attention became fragmented.
Honestly feels like distribution is becoming the real product skill now.
Top comments (4)
This landed on the exact day I learned it the hard way. I asked a dev how to price my tool; he wrote back that the wall wasn't price at all — it was that I had no traffic to convert. Same lesson you're naming here: I'd compressed building down to about an hour and quietly assumed distribution would follow. It doesn't.
"Matching workflows instead of technical terms" is the line I'm stealing. The tools that win discovery describe the user's outcome, not their own architecture — and that's a completely different muscle from shipping.
One bit I'm chewing on from your list: "building trust before channels suppress you." Do you mean trust as in audience-built-before-launch, or trust signals the algorithms read (dwell, engagement, returning visits)? Curious which one you think has to move first.
I think both matter, but algorithmic trust probably moves first now.
Especially for cold-start builders.
Search/distribution systems need enough signals to even keep showing you:
returning visits
branded searches
people not bouncing immediately
repeat mentions across platforms
consistent topical focus
Before that, it feels like channels throttle you pretty aggressively.
Audience trust compounds later on top of that.
"Algorithmic trust moves first" reframes my whole week. I was treating distribution as a megaphone problem (push harder) when it's actually a signal problem (earn the right to keep being shown). Different game entirely.
"Consistent topical focus" is the one I can act on today: I've been posting across e-commerce, AI tooling, and Japan sourcing like they're three lanes — which to the algorithm probably reads as no lane. Tightening that.
Curious about "branded searches" for a tool nobody's heard of yet: how do you bootstrap the first ones? Is it just picking a name distinctive enough that any search for it is branded, or something more deliberate you do to plant the term?
I think the name matters more than people used to think, honestly.
Not just for memorability, but because systems can actually connect repeated mentions much more easily now.
If your tool name is too generic, a lot of the signal gets mixed back into the category itself.
But I also don’t think naming alone is enough.
What seems to matter is repeated association between:
the name,
the workflow,
and the problem space.
Like if people keep seeing the same tool name attached to:
metadata cleanup,
privacy tools,
EXIF removal,
etc.
Eventually the name starts becoming part of the retrieval path for that category.
Still figuring this out myself though.