Don't assume that if you build it, they will come

When you launch a new product, or start a new business, you learn pretty quickly that nobody is paying attention and nobody really cares about it until you give them a reason to.

When I started working on Blink, I had never worked in sales or marketing before. So naturally, I had no idea what it really took to get a product in front of someone, and to get them to care enough to give it a try.

Distribution is increasingly becoming the hard part now that AI is driving the cost of building down to near $0. Soon, sales and marketing will become the only things that matter.

If you want to start a business, distribution must become your top priority. Here are some interesting strategies that I've seen people experiment with:

• Partnering with a content creator: instead of launching your calorie tracking app as a fresh new brand whose identity you must build from scratch, partner with a fitness influencer, give them meaningful ownership of the business, market it as "their product" and use their following as a distribution lever.
• Raising capital from your target customer: corporate venture capital has been around for a long time. Many startups in the deep tech, energy, and manufacturing sectors have relied on corporate investors as a distribution channel, where a company like Chevron might write a $1m investment into your new energy company and also commit to a trial across a subset of its oil refineries.

Among other things, building Blink has taught me a lot about how much hard work and sheer willpower it takes to bring something new to the market.

If you're building something, you need to understand that the default is: nobody cares about you, nobody cares about your product, and you will need to work 10x harder than you think to change that.

People care about themselves, and they want to feel emotions. If you can make it about them, you will succeed.

I'm not saying this to discourage you. I'm saying this because I believe anyone can do it, as long as you focus your attention on the right things. Get going!