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 (1)
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.