Distribution versus Product

What comes first – distribution or the product?

To most businesses, this isn’t even a question – there’s nothing to distribute without the product, so it comes first. But in the new era of lean startup, it’s something to ponder upon for those starting up today.

In the established, fast fading way of building startups, the distribution problem is generally tackled after the product-market fit has been achieved. The focus is on iterating the product based on customer feedback(?) till a P-M fit has been achieved, when you switch to focusing on distribution.

The problem with this approach is demonstrated by the thousands of untouched, unloved landing pages littering the Internet. How do you get valuable, and wide-based customer feedback on your MVP, if you have no distribution – no way of reaching a large number of users.

Low, and reducing, cost of developing MVPs means the battle line is shifting. It’s not as much about building the product right any more, as about getting the right product to the correct, target market. And while the cost of developing that MVP (whether a landing page or more full formed) is coming down fast, the cost of reaching a large number of relevant, interested users (to get the feedback from) is actually increasing due to the large number of MVPs seeking them out.

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My 2011 startups-to-watch list

stripe-logo-black trello-logo-blue

Came across my list of startups-to-watch from late 20111, while doing some spring cleaning yesterday. It was interesting to go back and see how the companies had fared over the 2-3 years since.

The Risers:

The Survivors:

The Pivotor:

The Acquired:

The Departed:

The list mostly conforms to my 3 key areas of interest in startups in 2011:

  1. TV interfaces (Plex, Snapp.tv, Corvair)
  2. Finance – Payment – Money Transfer (Stripe, Dwolla)
  3. ‘Easier’ Business Card solutions (CardFlick)

1st & 3rd were, and to an extent still are, areas that I looked at starting up  something of my own if no good solutions emerged. While my itch on bringing business cards to the digital century has been slightly sated by CamCard, the TV itch continues unabated…

If you made similar lists, do share who was on it, and how they did. Might just make an interesting comparison.

And if you too have an itch to work on solving the TV interface problem, get in touch!

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Company-watch on reddit

reddit-logoPro-tip for marketers:

Learn what people are saying about your company on @reddit with a simple URL:

http://www.reddit.com/domain/[your-domain]

Example: Track any posts on reddit mentioning/linking Europe’s leading seed investment program here:  http://www.reddit.com/domain/seedcamp.com

P.S.: If the scarcity of posts on that Seedcamp mentions page bothers you, get in touch with the program here: Wanted: Head of Content.