Developer's Insights: Balancing Product and Distribution

Focusing too much on product and you have no users. Focus too much on marketing and you'll only have a landing page, which should you choose?

Hello and welcome to my first newsletter! 👋

I’m Edwin, a student at UW in Seattle. In my free time I love to tinker around with new technology, learn new skills, and bounce ideas off others. Currently working on callcue.ai and expiredlistingscout.com

Problem I solved this past week:

In today’s age, there is an endless amount of tech stacks, creating a dilemma on which one to choose.

I faced this problem this past week with expiredlistingscout.com.

I toyed with the idea of purchasing a boilerplate to get started quickly vs starting from scratch with something like NextJS (which most boilerplates use anyway). 

In the end, I decided to go with a NextJS app from scratch with Supabase as the backend for the following reasons:

• NextJS, while some flaws do exist with the new app router, still has fairly good DX

• Likewise, Supabase is DX first. I love being able to generate typescript types from the database without having to use an ORM like Prisma (although I do like Prisma!)

I realize that by not using a boilerplate, I end up spending time setting up things that have minimal impact on my product like setting up auth and linking Stripe webhooks. 

A part of me realizes this, but another part sees this as an opportunity to learn. By building an app from scratch (bit of a stretch to claim with this stack), I see myself learning the essentials, even if it takes longer. 

Eventually, I hope to create my own personal boilerplate that I can simply fork whenever I have another idea.

Current Problem that I have

Building an application sounds great, until you realize you have to make it look good 😅.

 I would describe myself as a ‘backend engineer’. I love spending my time creating algorithms and backend processes instead of making good UIs. 

This works great for tinkering around with AWS but not so great when making a consumer facing product. 

Thankfully, I have found some good sources of frontend knowledge that I plan on studying this week. All of these resources were recommended to me by Denis @dinvlad:

• https://web.dev/learn/css/

• https://learnlayout.com/

• https://flexbox.io/

• https://cssgrid.io/

• https://ishadeed.com/article/grid-layout-flexbox-components/

Like anything, I know learning frontend will be a challenge, but it is doable and I possess the skills and knowledge to do so. If anything, I plan on working on these for the next week and will share my progress then!

Observation I want to share:

I feel like myself and other entrepreneurs focus on building, rather than marketing. 

Marketing is often seen as an afterthought or difficult to accomplish. And to be fair, marketing is hard. 

Not getting removed for self promo on Reddit is an art and finding ways to get in front of your target customers can be daunting.

So I offer this observation (credit: @codyschneiderxx on X):

Distribution is more important than product.

‘What? Are you saying that product quality doesn’t matter?’

No.

Product quality is still important but is less important than distribution. 

Think about it this way: Threads was able to gain 2 million users on its first day. I’m not sure about you, but I know that if I released the exact same app, it would take much, much longer to reach 2 million users. 

Threads was able to grow so fast simply because it was able to be distributed very well through shoutouts from Zuckerberg and subtle hints throughout Instagram.

We also see distribution play out in the form of sponsorships and shoutouts. Products and services that want to reach their target customers pay very good money for distribution.

Heck, building an audience via a newsletter, LinkedIn, Instagram, X or any other platform is valuable due to the attention it brings. 

Where attention goes, money flows. 💸

With this in mind, I have decided that going forward, I will focus on audiences I can reach effectively and work on figuring out solutions they will find valuable. 

For example, both of my projects, callcue.ai and expiredlistingscout.com, are tailored to real estate investors. 

Callcue.ai is cold calling using AI and expiredlistingscout.com automates the usage and collection of expired listings to find off market real estate deals.

This was done on purpose because I knew I could leverage my existing relationships in the real estate world to:

1. Gain feedback

2. Get initial traction. 

When starting a new venture, I would urge you to consider, ‘who can I reach better than anyone else making a similar product or service?’