The number one reason startups fail is because they don’t succeed in getting traction.
In other words, they fail because they don’t succeed in getting enough users or customers for their product or service so that revenues could be greater than expenses.
I know I know, duh, David, that’s obvious.
But, why do startups fail to get traction?
Most of the time it’s not because the product was bad or the idea didn’t solve a real problem. No, predominantly a startup doesn’t get traction because the founders don’t approach the business from a distribution first perspective. They never spend any time really figuring out how to efficiently get their product in front of their target customer. They don’t invest in building distribution channels.
This brings me to my main point: You should spend most of your time early in your startup’s life building distribution channels, not products.
The Mistake Everyone Makes
You are starting a company.
The reason you are likely starting it is because you have an AWESOME idea for a new product or service that just needs to exist in the world.
Of course, most entrepreneurs who find themselves at this point are going to spend the vast majority of their time and energy on building out their product and turning it into reality.
It makes sense why they would do this. Naturally, the new product and that thing they are creating is what they are so excited and passionate about. The product is what they are in love with. Not the question of, “How are you actually going to get people to use this product?”
So the distribution question gets ignored.
In this circumstance, the entrepreneur is so confident in their idea, and they just know that it will naturally spread like wildfire once they launch it. Why spend any time on marketing when the idea is this good?
The sad truth is that this NEVER happens, and the entrepreneurs who take this approach wind up launching their product to crickets. No one ever finds out about their amazing idea, and no one ever uses their product.
This is the mistake everyone makes. It’s the main reason why so many startups fail.
Distribution First Mentality
To win in business, I think you need to approach every new venture or startup idea from a distribution first mentality.
It should be the question above all other questions when evaluating a new business: “How am I going to get this product or service in front of my target customers at scale?”
If you have a hard time answering this question, then your idea sucks.
You HAVE to have a convincing, plausible, and executable distribution strategy for your product. If you do not, you are doomed to fail along with all of the other entrepreneurs who make the same mistake.
How We Built Distribution First
When starting our cryptocurrency tax software company CryptoTrader.Tax, we started with distribution first.
From the launch of the company, we knew that it was extremely likely that one of the strongest distribution channels for this type of product would be Google Search.
We knew this because we could see that there were THOUSANDS of searches being done on Google every month for questions like, “How to report cryptocurrency on taxes”, “Crypto taxes”, “Is bitcoin taxable”, etc. We used tools like Google Keyword planner, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest to see keyword volumes on Google.
The distribution channel was the search engine.
So, if we could rank highly on Google for these types of search queries, we’d likely get a consistent flow of users into our website and into our cryptocurrency tax automation app.
It’s that simple. We had an idea for an app, and we came from a distribution first angle: how can we get our app in front of our target customers?
With that question answered, we started focusing on writing high quality content discussing the tax implications of cryptocurrencies. We published this content on our blog, and then focused on getting this content ranking as high as possible in the search results (SEO) for high volume queries like “crypto taxes” and “how to report crypto on taxes”.
Before our product was even complete, we had thousands of people reading our blog content and signing up for the waitlist for an application that would automate all of their crypto tax reporting, a TurboTax-like experience for crypto investors.
Build the Distribution Channel
The examples of wildly successful entrepreneurs who took this same approach and built out distribution channels before launching products are endless.
One of my favorite recent examples is what The Hustle did when launching their subscription informational product Trends. The Hustle is a media company that spent years building a free tech and business newsletter that gets read by millions of people every day (now THAT is a distribution channel). Then, on the back of this distribution channel, they launched a subscription product that helps identify up-and-coming startup Trends for hopeful entrepreneurs.
The result?
Within a year of launch, Trends is making the company tens of millions of dollars.
This is only possible because the Hustle built their distribution first. They can now reap the benefits of owning that distribution in dozens of ways—including launching related products to their audience and making millions.
Conclusion
Spend more time thinking about how you’re going to effectively distribute your product over how you are going to build it. Better yet, build the distribution channel before the product is ever even live. Your chances of success go up exponentially.
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