Today, Distribution Is Built Before The Product

Read by Bernhard Hauser (not AI)

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After publishing last week's story on everyone being a media company now, I had lunch with Thomas, a content creator who has 50,000+ followers on TikTok and 24,000+ on Instagram.

He started creating video content about 1.5 years ago across different platforms - well before he began working on his new product, a local AI voice space. Thomas knew early on that he needed to build an audience first and a product to sell second.

After we sat down for lunch, he shared a few learnings.

Audience first. Product second.

He builds a compounding media engine. Each video adds to the next, helps him build a reputation and brings new subscribers everyday. Along the way, he shares updates about his product and by the time the product is ready, the distribution is already there.

What I learned was this:

• Starting out is tough as most people ignore you until you connect with something relatable. For him, that hook was helping folks who wanted to build software, but didn’t know how. Picking a niche is important.
• His view is that video is still the best way to build real reach and real connection with an audience.
• TikTok and Instagram are growth engines, but the mother of video is still YouTube.
• It's crazy what 20-year-olds are pulling off today: immense speed and creativity paired with a "move fast & break things" attitude.
• His audience absolutely dislikes any kind of AI-generated content. They smell it from 10 kilometers away; even when just the script is AI-generated.

In a world racing to produce AI-generated everything, he's going the opposite direction by being human on purpose.

What this means for founders and operators

The industry where AI really achieved product-market-fit is the software industry. It happened in such a quick way that most software is becoming cheap to build. At the same time, distribution channels are getting more crowded than ever.

Humans are not only competing with each other, but with AI-generated content at the same time.

Yet once you find a way to get attention, you can build trust and shape the perception people have of your business. That's what a media company owns and that is the asset Thomas is building alongside his product.

Three things from our lunch stuck with me:

1. The order matters. Building the audience first means the product launches into demand that already exists. Building the product first means hoping someone notices after the fact. One compounds, while the other does not.
2. Be human on purpose. AI is now the cheapest input in the system. That makes the human parts - the voice, the face, the real perspective - the scarce thing. Being deliberately human is a positioning strategy on its own.
3. You either own distribution or you rent it. Audiences you build belong to you if done right. Audiences you buy through reach on other platforms are expensive and they typically disappear the moment you stop paying. As ad costs rise and channels saturate, owned distribution will only get more valuable.

Most builders I know are still treating distribution as something you figure out along the way or after the product is ready, but the next generation of founders and operators is doing it the other way around.

And I think they're right. What do you think?