A great product is the best distribution channel!
I've just discovered that Clubhouse only got 48 upvotes when they launched on product hunt 8 months ago. Today they worth 1 billion.
It proves that creating a great product is the most important thing to focus on, even if that's a painful and frustrating process sometimes.
No it's not. Product and distribution channels are very different things and never to be conflated for each other. They are popular now because of network effect. Most products don't have network effects, if your product doesn't have network effect, you must push it through a distribution channel, if it has network effects, you seed it and push it until the network effect takes over and it grows on it's own.
All social medias have network effects, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snap, etc. Clubhouse has the same thing going...
You're right about network effect, but for one successful social network, there are hundreds of ones that don't have any success. You can have a look at the internet, the social network cemetery is huge.
So, why some thrilled when others just don't exist? I tend to think this is a mix of vision, execution and luck.
However, when as Clubhouse you start with so little hype, explain their success only by momentum and business characteristics just don't work.
Roam Research, for instance, is not a social network, that's an individual note-taking app, they didn't do any marketing, but have created real enthusiasm among their users, because their product is just great.
A product is not great because founders have decided it. It's great when people use it an talk about it with enthusiasm. That's the case for Clubhouse.
digesting from what you said about -
the product is great when the need is real and there and the product can be found to match that need
the question is if there was a hole already for people
and if you filled it correctly
and if you let the "right people" know about it
and if they were receptive at the time (this is partially the "luck" part)
and if you kept letting people know about it
..
For me, a product is great when it solves a problem ten times better than other alternatives on the market or show a vision of the future that people embraced with enthusiasm.
I think there is a graveyard full of them :shrug:
like sometimes the cost of switching to a 10x better product is too high
or the 10x better product doesn't understand who it is really 10x for
Also, it's a very generic term that makes people focus on technicals and ignores the rest of the system a bussines is in a way
The distribution you are excited about is word of mouth. Indeed, word of mouth (aka referral) is generally-speaking the best distribution channel.
P.S. That is a cool stat you pointed out about CH!
I agree. In that case, the interesting point is that Clubhouse has started their viral loop with really little people. That's why I tend to think that the product led the growth.
What specifically in their product you think is that part?
Not part in particular. That was more a general assumption.
Have you a view about it?
I don't have an ios device to test it currently and know nothing about it.
generically, social platforms have a better word of mouth portion
that's not true for all products
I'm sure they do some marketing
Some initial traffic could be way more meaningful than other
If you know the powerful sneasers that would use it, or your platform is optimized for them...