No. 002 — Distribution before product

My first company died of a disease I could have diagnosed in month one.

We spent two years perfecting a product a few dozen people loved, and no repeatable channel could deliver. The autopsy is on the failures page; this letter is about the prevention.

The one-month test

Before writing product code, I’d now spend one month answering a single question: what are three plausible ways strangers will find this, and what’s the cheapest test of each?

• A landing page against real ad spend beats a survey.
• Ten cold emails with a concrete offer beat a hundred coffee chats.
• One partner willing to put you in front of their audience beats both.

If all three tests come back dead, the idea isn’t dead — but the version of it you were about to build probably is.

Build something, write it down.