in 2025, execution is cheap. distribution is priceless.
I built a new website for myself, zdsims.com, and everyone I showed it to asked me “why do you even need one of these?” Their skepticism reveals something fascinating about how technology has transformed the relationship between building and distribution. In 2024, I believe there is a core axiom on the internet: as the cost of execution approaches zero, the value of distribution approaches infinity.
Historically, there was somewhat of an inverse relationship between technical complexity and distribution needs. Certain companies were extremely difficult to build – PG famously coined the “ schlep factor” to refer to some of them – often because of the technical and operational complexity required to get a functional product out the door. When the cost of building a product like that is so high, oftentimes that’s enough of a moat to start out as lousy at distribution. And conversely, if you have extreme distribution (as we see oftentimes with celebrities and influencers launching products), starting with a product that’s somewhat less polished off the bat can often be fine so long as you improve it along the way.
In 2024, the cost of execution in software has dropped dramatically. One developer, together with the power of Cursor, Claude, or other LLM-based tools, can build 5-10x faster than they could have beforehand. Andy Jassy has talked about how this has transformed behemoths like Amazon: shipping faster with fewer engineers. Better yet, if you’re not an engineer, you can get started with tools like bolt.new or Replit and code in plain english.
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