50% of time on distribution, not product
AI compresses production cost to zero — "good product" becomes commodity. Only scarcity = audience. Strong product + 0 audience → launch ≈ 0 users; average product + 50k audience → launch ≈ 5,000 users (10% conversion). Justin Welsh built ~500k LinkedIn/Twitter following → $15M one-person business — existence proof of the "audience-first, product-second" sequence. Without audience, you drown among 5,000 identical things.