Product vs Distribution

Product versus distribution capability - what's more crucial for a founder to focus on at the early stages & why?

Tune in to know how we think about it.

Salonie:

Product versus distribution capabilities, what’s more important or what would you pick?

Avnish:

This is a big one because intrinsically I’m a product person and I believe that best products win and I saw this Marc Andreessen statement where he said, we would all like the best products to win but distribution does. And that’s true, if your product doesn’t get into the hand of a customer how will you win? The flip side is if a shitty product gets in the hand of a customer what happens? So, in my view, short term distribution wins, long term product wins. But the only way to build a sustainable business is to have both hand in hand, right?

Our bias at Matrix, recognizing that distribution is very critical, we are still more product-first, we are still more product biased. But we lay a lot on emphasis on GTM, the go to market. How will you get the products in the hands of the market and increasingly we’ve discussed this in the context of experienced founders, because they realize that distribution is very important, they actually focus a lot on GTM. So I think that’s kind of how the two things come together.