DH

Games Biz Dev @Samsung, Founder of Subliminal Holdings, ex-@Twitch / @Amazon

[DH @dhshon]

golden

[andrew chen @andrewchen]

Here's a common startup situation. A team busts their ass for months building the first version of their product. It's almost done. Now a big question emerges -- how do you get the first people to use your product? Hmm...

If you find yourself at this moment, then you are already in a bad place.

99% of startups are not differentiated on their underlying technology, and there is very little engineering risk involved. (I'm ignoring deep tech and foundational AI research companies, for the sake of this conversation). Because technology differentiation is no longer a real factor today start ups, it turns out that most products are succeeding or failing due to core product/market fit followed by the distribution strategy. There are over 9 million mobile apps. There are a billion websites. Figuring out distribution is key.

This is why I think startups end up needing both:
1) an insight about customers that gives them product/market fit
2) an insight about distribution that creates traction

People building products often have an easier time product/market fit because they are building for themselves, or a customer that they already know well. But the latter, about distribution, is often super difficult because once you onboard your friends and family, and look to expand the next set of hundreds of customers, you then dive into the world of growth marketing strategies and tactics which are its own very particular learned skill set.

Sometimes when there's a new breakthrough technology, as with what is happening in AI, or the Apple vision Pro, or Web3, it's simply enough that the product has a "it works" feature. By simply being there on the scene when adoption of a new platform is happening, distribution happens automatically. I think that's why we see that so many new great startups are launched right at the beginning of the platform.

But what happens when you are trying to launch the 9,000,001th mobile app? The first thing you do, naturally, is to try to read what's out there. The other counterintuitive thing, is that although most of the knowledge in writing out there pertains to channels like SEO or paid marketing or influencer campaigns, many of these tactics best fit already successful products that have money and aim to accelerate growth. Many of these tactics simply won't apply to you because they'll be too expensive, or they will use mature marketing channels that just won't be that effective. I often joke that by the time there's a case study about a new marketing tactic or channel, the advantage has already been arbitrage away, and probably no longer works.

So what should you do instead?

Ideally the product and the distribution hypotheses happen at the same time, and reinforce each other. The Dropbox founders describe to me at the inception of their product, that sharing folders was part of the vision and was built in quite quickly. And later years this drove a significant amount of growth. Uber has natural virality because you often ride in a car with other people, or you ride a car to see somebody, and naturally you'll mention the service. A product for creators, like Substack, will naturally encourage people on the platform to write and share content, attracting an audience who ultimately may also be writers themselves. Zoom, and other apps that help collaboration in the workplace, have natural features that cause you to bring in your coworkers as you use the product experience.

These are all examples of the best form of distribution, which are baked in to the product idea itself, rather than bolted on at the end.

Even once you have a basic theory for how your product will naturally distribute itself, you'll still need to identify the first generation of users to help iron out all the issues, and give you feedback on whether your hypotheses were correct. In my years of studying new product launches, I can confidently say that the early years are often very idiosyncratic, and constantly changing. The reason for this of course is that marketing channels change all the time, but subscale ones that help you get your first couple thousand users, change even more so.

A few years ago you saw a trend were products would launch a huge conferences like SXSW. These days you see more effort on getting influencers involved early. Or "building in public" which makes yourself into an influencer. Several years ago many consumer products (like dating sites, new photo apps, etc) would launch on college campuses via the Greek system, because they were organized ways to reach thousands of undergraduate students. These days the organizations are often inundated with start up requests, and it's become less effective. As a result all of these initial channels change all the time, and it's up to the founders to figure out how to take advantage of what might work today.

The problem with these initial channels is that they eventually tap out.

Thus starts the journey of startups to grow and expand their portfolio of distribution channels, beginning with small and highly relevant ones, into the biggest channels.

I sometimes imagine a X Y axis, where X is volume of the channel, and Y is responsiveness. Early channels are often very low volume. But you want that. The reason is that they are highly relevant and they are small enough that larger companies do not focus on them. As I mentioned influencers are often an example of this, but so are niche newsletters, or or event marketing. However if you find this channel to be successful, you'll also eventually one more scale. This involves you jumping onto the next set of channels, which will provide more volume but be much more competitive as a result.

Often times this is a period where you have one channel that kind of works, and you're testing a few other channels simultaneously. Your efforts here should be experimental and iterative. You can often look at direct competitors as well as adjacent products and see what they're doing, to inspire you on the right channel. The natural cadence of products will indicate to you the channels that are most likely to work. If you have episodic usage, you'll probably need to do SEO/SEM, affiliate, or referral -- something that helps you target high intent users. If you're product is social or helps with workplace collaboration, then you might lean into referral programs and viral growth. Products in commerce naturally lead you towards paid ads, contact creators, etc. You can often learn a lot by talking to other people in your industry or an adjacent industries to see what works.

This is where sometimes I'll see people working on episodic usage apps, like travel/health/etc asking the question, how do I make my product virally? I want free users! Of course the problem is, there's a natural fit between a product and it's distribution channels. Even though you might want free distribution, only very specific niches of networked products are able to grow freely. Generally everybody else must pay for their distribution, whether via referral or advertising.

Eventually you want to move on the XY axis towards volume. There are only about a dozen large scale distribution channels that can propel a product to scale. Advertising is on that list, SEO too, and so is viral growth. But these larger channels, by their nature, are both highly scaled but also have low responsiveness. As a result, you end up competing with some of the most famous brands in the industry as a result. Who wants to buy ads against the same audiences as major credit card or airlines? They have insanely high payback periods, and huge marketing budget, and are not that cost sensitive.

Ironically, this is where great products become to dominate. I started this discussion with the dual requirement of product/market fit, and distribution. But in the end, product/market fit actually dominates.

The reason is the following -- the ability for a company to operate out in these most expensive and highly scaled channels comes from having a great product that generates a ton of word of mouth. More natural usage, the less marketing that has to be done. And the marketing costs that do exist end up being blended in with the large number of organic users.

The journey of a new product is to move, from unscaled and relevant, to highly scaled. And at the end, great products win.

[DH @dhshon]

@arnoldwh That fruit looks edible 😋 happy holidays!

[Emmett Shear @eshear]

Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my now 9 month old son. Spending time with him has been every bit as rewarding as I thought it would be, and I was happily avoiding full time employment. I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could.

I have spent today drinking from the firehose as much as possible, speaking with the board, a small number of major partners, and listening to employees. Our partnership with Microsoft remains strong, and my priority in the coming weeks will be to make sure we continue to serve all our customers well. OpenAI employees are extremely impressive, as you might have guessed, and mission-driven in the extreme. And it’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust.

I have a three point plan for the next 30 days:
- Hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.
- Continue to speak to as many of our employees, partners, investors, and customers as possible, take good notes, and share the key takeaways.
- Reform the management and leadership team in light of recent departures into an effective force to drive results for our customers.

Depending on the results everything we learn from these, I will drive changes in the organization — up to and including pushing strongly for significant governance changes if necessary. I will be rolling these out as they become clear over the 30 day period. OpenAI’s stability and success are too important to allow turmoil to disrupt them like this. I will endeavor to address the key concerns as well, although in many cases I believe it may take longer than a month to achieve true progress.

I have nothing but respect for what Sam and the entire OpenAI team have built. It’s not just an incredible research project and software product, but an incredible company. I’m here because I know that, and I want to do everything in my power to protect it and grow it further.

It's now 1am and I'll pick this up tomorrow.

PS: I am posting this here both because I think it’s in the general public interest to know in this case, but please don’t expect all future internal comms to come through a public channel.

PPS: Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did *not* remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models.

[DH @dhshon]

@CQ_Miya let's party in London :D

[DH @dhshon]

Game day fellas @T1LoL

[DH @dhshon]

Finally it's out - and more to come :)

[Blacknut Gaming @Blacknut_Games]

US #Samsung TV owners, we have a surprise for you! 🎁PLAY for FREE with @Blacknut_Games & @SamsungGaming! 🎮- details below (1 / 2 )

#cloudgaming #smartTVs #videogames #playitcloud #gamingnews #samsungaminghub #gaminghub #blacknutcloudgaming

[VGT Gaming News @GAMERNEWSonX]

Microsoft has indeed altered its policy concerning third-party accessories for its Xbox consoles.

Starting from November 12, 2023, the use of unauthorized third-party accessories with Xbox consoles is no longer permitted.

Gamers have reported receiving a warning message on their consoles concerning this new rule.

Microsoft and its licensed hardware partners design and manufacture accessories to meet specific quality standards for performance, security, and safety.

The use of unauthorized accessories may compromise these elements on Xbox consoles, including both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S models.

Moreover, when a user connects an unauthorized accessory to their Xbox console, they will initially receive an error code (0x82d60002). From that moment, they have a two-week window to continue using the accessory before it gets blocked from use with the console.

After this period, attempting to use the unauthorized accessory will result in a different error code (0x82d60003).

An “Authorized Accessory” as per Microsoft’s definition, refers to either a Microsoft-branded or a Microsoft-licensed third-party branded Xbox hardware accessory.

Such authorized accessories are identified by a “Licensed for Xbox” and/or “Designed for Xbox” logo on their packaging.

Furthermore, Microsoft has made efforts to collaborate with over 34 gaming brands to manufacture licensed products for the Xbox Series X, covering various categories such as accessibility, PC, and Cloud Gaming.

This initiative is part of a broader strategy to ensure accessory compatibility with the next-gen Xbox consoles, by fostering partnerships with many of the industry’s major accessory manufacturers.

What do you think of this new policy? Do you have any third party #Xbox controllers?

[DH @dhshon]

@Chen meet @SamsungGaming :)

[Tom Warren @tomwarren]

Xbox and PlayStation battle it out at The Sphere. Both Microsoft and Sony have spent thousands of $$$ in Las Vegas this week on 90-second marketing spots at the $2.3 billion Sphere attraction. Details here 👉 https://t.co/G3kCOEvdMk

[DH @dhshon]

What was NFT again?

[Tom Warren @tomwarren]

Meta’s new Quest 3 VR headset can access Xbox games through Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming

[DH @dhshon]

@CookSux let’s friedchicken go

[Rueben Hewitt @FitFastCoach]

Your belly fat is paving the way for:

• Heart disease
• Depression
• Diabetes
• Cancer

To rid yourself of the EXCESS pounds, here are 12 things you must know:

1. There’s a precise order to eating the food on your plate

[DH @dhshon]

@hey_madni @readwise save thread

[DH @dhshon]

@markgadala @readwise save thread

[DH @dhshon]

Just for the record... I still don't get crypto

[DH @dhshon]

@CookSux @bilgenwaffles LFG brother!

[DH @dhshon]

@hasantoxr @readwise save thread

[DH @dhshon]

@CookSux lolllll

[DH @dhshon]

my AMZN go brrrrrrrrrr