When building gets cheap, distribution is the moat

The shift

If products get easier to build, more of them get built. Every niche gets more competitors, and many of them will be good enough. The question stops being "can you make it?" and becomes "can you reach the people who need it, and do they already know you?"

Distribution is any reliable path to customers that others can't easily copy: an audience that follows you, a partner network, a sales channel built over years, a reputation in a community, being the default name in your niche.

Why it holds

Distribution is built from relationships and attention, and both take time. A competitor can generate a thousand articles in a week, but not the newsletter readers who have trusted you for years, or the reseller who has recommended you for a decade.

What changes

• Discovery is moving to AI assistants. More buyers ask an assistant for a recommendation before they visit any website. Being clearly described, easy to cite and well reviewed matters more each year. (This site publishes an llms.txt for exactly that reason.)
• Volume is no longer a signal. Everyone can publish a lot. Being specific, credible and useful is what gets noticed.
• Small teams can run bigger channels. AI can draft, personalize and follow up, so a team of five can keep up relationships that used to need a sales department.

What to do about it

• Know where customers really come from. Trace your last ten customers back to how they found you.
• Invest in channels you own. Audience, partners and referrals compound. Ads and marketplace rankings are rented.
• Make your business easy for AI to understand. Clear descriptions, structured information and genuine reviews help assistants recommend you accurately.
• Deepen before you widen. Use AI to serve existing relationships better before chasing new ones.

Where we come in

Our audit looks at how customers actually find you and where AI can extend those channels without diluting them. See the services.