The Distribution Solution
Get Out Of The Haystack
With over 1.5 Billion websites and no central distribution platform it’s beyond difficult to stand out. The potential reach is 5 billion people, but how on earth are any of them supposed to find your site?
The App Store is a little better with 9 million apps across both platforms, and a potential reach of 4.8 Billion. The distribution is much better here, with organized categories and climbable rankings. Still quite the needle in a haystack for an unproven product though.
What about Chrome Extensions?
Only 130K, with a potential of 3.69 billion users.
That’s a much smaller sliver of almost as big of a pie.
Wordpress has 60,000 plugins and over 500 million users.
Shopify, 8,000 and 875 million.
Slack,2,600 and 38.8 million.
Not as good as Chrome extensions but still sizable.
There are many more, virtually every popular platform has a better distribution ratio than the internet and App Stores.
Pros:
Inheriting existing functionality.
Sticky User Base
Inherited Functionality
Contextual pain points
Cons:
Rules can change
Reduced control
More difficult to monetize(maybe)
It doesn’t need to be the long term strategy. But there’s no better place to validate.
It’s a tough message for founders to hear. Many great products, however, started out as integrations
Calendly(Google Calendar)
Plaid(Banking Apps)
Zapier(Google Apps)
Loom(Chrome/Slack Extension)
Grammarly(Chrome Extension)
Klaviyo(Shopify)
Honey(Chrome Extension)
There may be a growth ceiling here.
It’s the Sistine Chapel compared to most standalone launches though.
100% Typo Guarantee - This message was written without any AI assistance. All yours imperfectly truly. Therefore, I can virtually guarantee there’s a double word or misspelling somewhere. Happy Hunting!