Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, a potential client approached me with an exciting opportunity: build a two-sided marketplace platform. The budget was substantial, the technical challenge was interesting, and it would have been one of my biggest projects to date. I said no.
Here's the thing that shocked them: "If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build—not three months."
This experience crystallized something I'd been seeing across dozens of client projects: founders obsessing over building the perfect product while completely ignoring whether anyone actually wants it. They had no existing audience, no validated customer base, no proof of demand—just an idea and enthusiasm.
After years of watching beautiful products launch to crickets, I've become convinced that the biggest startup killer isn't bad code or ugly design. It's building something nobody discovers. Distribution beats product quality every single time.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why most product launches fail at the distribution stage
My framework for testing demand before building anything
The manual validation process that saves months of development
How to build an audience before you build a product
Real examples of distribution-first launches that worked
Ready to flip the script on how you think about product launches? Let's dive into why distribution should come first.
Reality Check
What every startup founder believes about launching
Walk into any startup accelerator or browse through Product Hunt, and you'll hear the same conventional wisdom repeated like gospel:
"Build first, distribute later" - Focus on creating an amazing product, then figure out how to get it in front of people
"If you build it, they will come" - Great products naturally find their audience through word-of-mouth and organic growth
"Perfect the MVP before launch" - Spend months polishing features and user experience before showing it to anyone
"Product-market fit comes from iterating on features" - Keep adding functionality until users love it
"Technical execution is everything" - The best technology wins the market
This advice sounds logical, and it's what most SaaS founders follow religiously. Accelerators reinforce it, investor pitch decks are built around it, and countless startup books preach it.
The problem? It's completely backwards.
This conventional wisdom exists because it feels safer. Building is controllable—you can manage timelines, features, and quality. Distribution feels chaotic and unpredictable. Most technical founders are more comfortable in code than in sales conversations.
But here's where this approach falls apart: you can build the most elegant, feature-rich product in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, it's worthless. I've seen countless startups spend 18 months perfecting their product only to discover there's no market for it. By then, they're out of runway and out of options.
The uncomfortable truth is that most product failures aren't product failures—they're distribution failures.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this client came to me with their marketplace idea, they represented everything wrong with the "build first" mentality. They had spent months researching no-code tools and AI platforms, convinced that if they could just build their vision quickly and cheaply, users would flock to it.
Their pitch was textbook startup optimism: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing." They had no existing audience, no validated customer base, no proof that either side of their marketplace actually wanted what they were proposing. Just enthusiasm and a budget.
I could have taken the money. Three months of guaranteed revenue building their platform. But I'd seen this movie before, and I knew how it ended.
Instead, I told them something that initially shocked them: "If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build—not three months."
I recommended they start with the simplest possible test:
Day 1: Create a simple landing page explaining their value proposition
Week 1: Start manual outreach to potential users on both sides
Week 2-4: Manually match supply and demand via email/WhatsApp
Month 2: Only after proving demand, consider building automation
They weren't thrilled. This wasn't the exciting technical challenge they'd envisioned. But it was the right approach.
This conversation crystallized something I'd been seeing across multiple client projects: your first MVP should be your marketing and sales process, not your product. Distribution and validation come before development, not after.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After rejecting that marketplace project and reflecting on dozens of client launches, I developed a systematic approach that flips traditional product development on its head. Instead of build-then-distribute, I now advocate for a distribution-first methodology that proves demand before writing a single line of code.
Phase 1: Audience Before Product (Days 1-30)
Most founders start by building, then scramble to find users. I start by finding users, then build what they actually want. This begins with identifying and engaging your target audience manually:
Create a simple landing page that explains the problem you're solving
Start conversations with potential customers through LinkedIn, Twitter, or relevant communities
Document every conversation and pain point mentioned
Build an email list of interested prospects before you have anything to sell
The goal isn't to make sales—it's to understand if the problem you think exists actually exists, and if people care enough to pay for a solution.
Phase 2: Manual MVP (Days 31-60)
Instead of building software, become the software. Manually deliver the value proposition to test if people actually want what you're offering:
For a marketplace: manually match buyers and sellers via email
For a SaaS tool: create reports or analyses manually using spreadsheets
For an e-commerce business: dropship or pre-sell before holding inventory
This approach, inspired by Brian Balfour's growth frameworks, forces you to understand every step of your customer journey intimately. You'll learn things about user behavior that no amount of product iteration could teach you.
Phase 3: Systematic Validation (Days 61-90)
Once you've manually delivered value to your first 10-50 customers, you can start identifying patterns and building systems around what actually works:
Track which acquisition channels bring the highest-quality customers
Document which parts of your manual process customers value most
Identify the minimum viable features needed to automate your manual process
Build distribution channels before building the product that flows through them
Only after you've proven demand through manual delivery and built reliable distribution channels should you start automating with technology. Your product should be built to scale a proven distribution system, not to create one.
This approach aligns with what top growth experts recommend: focusing on distribution and customer development before product development. In the age of AI and no-code tools, the constraint isn't building—it's knowing what to build and for whom.
Validation
Test demand before building anything
Audience First
Build your customer base before your product
Manual Delivery
Become the software before building it
Distribution Channels
Build pathways before products
Establish reliable ways to reach customers before creating what flows through those channels. Your product should scale a proven distribution system.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The results of this distribution-first approach speak for themselves, though they require a different mindset about what "success" looks like in the early stages.
When I work with clients who embrace this methodology, they typically see:
90% reduction in initial development time - from months to days for the first version
Higher customer retention rates - because they built exactly what validated customers asked for
Faster path to profitability - revenue starts flowing before major development costs
Lower customer acquisition costs - because they understand their audience before spending on marketing
More importantly, they avoid the common startup death spiral: spending months building something nobody wants. The marketplace client I mentioned? They ultimately followed a version of this approach and discovered their original idea needed significant pivoting based on actual customer conversations.
The most successful distribution-first launches I've seen combine content strategy with authentic relationship building. When you position yourself as a helpful resource in your niche rather than just another vendor, the entire customer acquisition dynamic changes. Distribution beats product quality, but the best distribution comes from genuine value creation.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
After implementing this approach across multiple client projects and seeing the patterns emerge, here are the key lessons I've learned:
Manual validation saves more time than it costs - The weeks spent on manual outreach prevent months of building the wrong thing
Customers buy outcomes, not features - Focus on the problem you're solving, not the technology you're using to solve it
Distribution channels need nurturing time - Content marketing, partnerships, and audience building require consistent effort over months
Technical founders resist this approach - Building feels productive; sales conversations feel uncertain
This works best for B2B and service businesses - Hardware or consumer products may need different validation approaches
Document everything from day one - Customer insights from early conversations become your product roadmap
Your competitors are probably building first - This gives you a distribution advantage if you start with audience building
The biggest mistake I see founders make is treating this as a binary choice—either you build first OR you distribute first. The reality is more nuanced. You need both, but the sequence matters enormously. Start with understanding and reaching your customers, then build the minimal viable solution to automate what you've proven manually.
For your Ecommerce store
For SaaS startups implementing this approach:
Start with manual consulting or services in your target niche
Build an audience through content before building software
Use spreadsheets and existing tools for your first "product"
Focus on one specific use case rather than a broad platform