Founder distribution

Purpose

Unify positioning, first-user recruitment, channel selection, conversion, referrals, and growth loops around retained customers rather than raw traffic.

Give the founder a decision, the evidence behind it, the strongest contrary case, and the smallest executable next step. Do not produce generic encouragement or a long menu of tactics.

When to Trigger

Use this skill according to the frontmatter description. If the stated issue is a symptom of an earlier broken link, say so and route to founder-debugger or the owning retained skill.

Inputs Needed

• Narrow ICP and core job
• Retention and activation by segment
• How best users discovered the product
• Positioning and current alternative
• Funnel counts by channel
• Founder sales and outreach evidence
• Channel cost, speed, reach, control, and saturation
• Natural sharing, content, collaboration, transaction, or marketplace outputs
• Available founder time, skills, cash, and brand risk

Ask only for missing inputs capable of changing the decision. For reversible actions, make assumptions explicit and propose a bounded test instead of blocking on perfect data.

Questions to Ask

• Are users retained strongly enough to justify more acquisition?
• Where do ideal users already search, work, buy, gather, or ask for help?
• How did the best ten users discover and decide?
• Can the target user repeat what the product is and why it matters?
• What is the smallest manual route to ten more similar users?
• Which channel matches purchase frequency and buyer behavior?
• Does each acquired user create an output that can acquire another?
• Can the company own the audience or is it dependent on a gatekeeper?
• What channel would still work if paid spend stopped?
• Which single funnel step is currently constraining retained growth?

Mental Models

• Retention before scale.
• Founder-led before delegated.
• Channel-product fit.
• Positioning is part of distribution.
• One strong channel before many weak channels.
• Loops compound; campaigns reset.
• Cost per retained customer.
• Owned versus rented distribution.
• Manual acquisition reveals the scalable mechanism.

Use these models as competing lenses. Select the one that best explains the observed behavior, state what evidence would falsify it, and convert it into a decision rather than repeating it as a slogan.

YC Principles

• Founders are the first growth team and cannot outsource early distribution.
• Recruit early users manually and study them like an anthropologist.
• Launch repeatedly to specific audiences; the world is not waiting for one grand reveal.
• Choose channels from where users already behave, not from fashionable tactics.
• Measure funnels and retained cohorts, not impressions or total signups.
• Most great companies become exceptionally good at one scalable channel before diversifying.

Paul Graham Principles

• Startups must grow, but growth follows making something people want.
• Do unscalable recruiting and over-service to learn what can later scale.
• A narrow group that wants the product intensely is a better beachhead than broad mild awareness.

Garry Tan Principles

• Distribution remains a founder responsibility alongside product craft.
• Use AI to multiply research, personalization, creative throughput, and analysis while protecting relevance and trust.
• Prefer earned channel insight over copying another startup's playbook.

Decision Frameworks

Readiness gate

1. A target segment is explicit.
2. That segment reaches first value.
3. Its retention curve stabilizes or repeat behavior is strong.
4. The promise is understood.
5. Economics or founder effort can support the next test.
6. If any fail, route upstream before scaling.

Channel selector

1. High-intent rare purchase: search, targeted content, marketplaces, sales, or partnerships.
2. Known account list and high value: founder outbound and direct sales.
3. Collaborative product: invitations and teammate loops.
4. User-created public output: sharing, attribution, templates, or content loops.
5. Community identity or practice: member-to-member value and events.
6. Local marketplace: constrain geography and seed the hard side manually.
7. Frequent consumer behavior: product loops, creators, paid acquisition after retention.

Experiment card

1. Segment and job
2. Channel mechanism
3. Message and proof
4. Funnel event definitions
5. Budget and founder hours
6. Retained-customer success threshold
7. Stop rule and review date
8. What becomes a reusable asset if it works

Step-by-Step Process

1. Confirm retention and choose one narrow segment.
2. Hand off from retention with a written gate: exact segment, retained core action, observation window, cohort count, and the maximum affordable cost per retained customer; if any is unknown, run a narrow manual acquisition test rather than scale.
3. Interview best users about discovery, alternatives, decision, and sharing.
4. Write positioning: for whom, painful job, category or alternative, promised outcome, proof.
5. List channels that match observed behavior.
6. Score each on fit, speed, cost, control, reach, saturation, and founder advantage.
7. Choose one manual channel and recruit the next ten users.
8. Instrument impression or contact through retained core action.
9. Run a bounded test with a precommitted threshold.
10. Inspect converted, non-converted, retained, and churned users.
11. Repeat the mechanism before adding headcount or automation.
12. Turn the winner into a loop, owned asset, playbook, or product surface.
13. Diversify only when the first channel is understood or nearing saturation.

Checklists

Before test

• Retention readiness passes.
• One segment and one channel are selected.
• Message uses customer language and proof.
• Full funnel and retained endpoint are defined.
• Budget, owner, threshold, and stop rule exist.

Before scale

• The mechanism repeated across cohorts.
• Retained quality did not fall.
• Founder-led steps are documented.
• Economics include labor and support.
• Channel dependence and saturation risk are understood.

Red Flags

• The plan begins with more traffic despite weak activation or retention.
• The ICP is everyone who could use the product.
• Press, virality, or a launch spike is treated as a repeatable channel.
• The team runs five channels with too little evidence in each.
• Outbound volume rises while relevance falls.
• SEO content has no product authority or conversion path.
• Referral incentives precede realized value.
• The company hires growth before founders find a working mechanism.
• CAC excludes failed activation, churn, founder labor, or support.

Common Mistakes

• Separating positioning from channel execution.
• Optimizing clicks instead of retained customers.
• Copying competitor channels without the same product behavior.
• Automating outreach before founders learn what resonates.
• Calling a one-time campaign a loop.
• Adding paid spend before cohort quality is known.
• Ignoring channel concentration and platform risk.

Metrics

• Retained customers by channel and cohort
• Cost per retained customer
• Contact or impression to qualified response
• Qualified response to activation
• Activation to retained core action
• Time to first value by channel
• Referral or loop conversion and cycle time
• Organic share and direct traffic
• Channel payback and gross margin
• Founder hours per retained customer
• Channel concentration and saturation

For every metric, define the unit, numerator, denominator, cohort, segment, cadence, source event, and owner. Prefer decision thresholds and cohort movement over universal benchmarks.

Example Scenarios

Scenario 1

A viral tweet creates signups but weak retention: classify it as attention, not distribution; identify the retained segment and recruit ten more manually.

Scenario 2

B2B founders consider an SDR: first run targeted founder outbound until ICP, message, qualification, objections, and close path repeat.

Scenario 3

A collaboration product has strong retention: test an invitation loop only after the inviter reaches value, and measure referred-user retention separately.

AI Prompt Templates

Template 1

Select the best first distribution channel from this ICP, retention evidence, discovery behavior, product loop, price, and founder advantage. Reject channels that do not fit.
End with a decision, owner, deadline, metric, threshold, stop rule, and strongest contrary case.

Template 2

Design a two-week distribution experiment with segment, message, proof, funnel, budget, retained endpoint, threshold, and stop rule.
End with a decision, owner, deadline, metric, threshold, stop rule, and strongest contrary case.

Template 3

Diagnose this channel report using cost per retained customer. Separate positioning, targeting, activation, retention, economics, and saturation.
End with a decision, owner, deadline, metric, threshold, stop rule, and strongest contrary case.

Related Skills

• founder-retention
• founder-talking-to-users
• founder-pricing
• founder-mvp
• founder-prioritization
• founder-debugger

Further Reading

1. How to Get Your First Users — Founder-led study and recruitment of early users before scalable acquisition.
2. How to Get Your First Customers — Turns user conversations into first sales through narrow targeting and founder-led outreach.
3. Growth AMA with Gustaf Alströmer — Stage-specific channel selection, founder-led growth, retention prerequisites, and marketplace sequencing.
4. Startup School Week 4: Launching and Growth — Links manual launch, retention, funnels, product growth, and external channels.
5. Scaling Growth — North-star selection, experimentation, channel concentration, and the transition to growth teams.
6. Sales Advice for Technical Founders — Specific prospect-research and founder-outreach practices for B2B distribution.

Source Links

• How to Get Your First Users — Y Combinator. Founder-led study and recruitment of early users before scalable acquisition.
• How to Get Your First Customers — Gustaf Alströmer. Turns user conversations into first sales through narrow targeting and founder-led outreach.
• Growth AMA with Gustaf Alströmer — Gustaf Alströmer. Stage-specific channel selection, founder-led growth, retention prerequisites, and marketplace sequencing.
• Startup School Week 4: Launching and Growth — Kat Mañalac and Gustaf Alströmer. Links manual launch, retention, funnels, product growth, and external channels.
• Scaling Growth — Gustaf Alströmer, Ed Baker, and Josh Elman. North-star selection, experimentation, channel concentration, and the transition to growth teams.
• Sales Advice for Technical Founders — Y Combinator. Specific prospect-research and founder-outreach practices for B2B distribution.
• Do Things That Don't Scale — Paul Graham. Manual recruiting, over-serving early users, and direct observation as the path to discovering what should later scale.
• Startup = Growth — Paul Graham. Defines a startup through growth and explains why market and distribution must support it.
• YC's Essential Startup Advice — Y Combinator. The early-stage order of operations: launch, talk to users, iterate, and delay scaling until people want the product.
• Startup Playbook — Sam Altman. A broad operating reference for product, growth, focus, hiring, competition, and execution.