How to Build Distribution When Anyone Can Clone Your Product

the complete blueprint for building distribution (the advantage competitors can´t copy), from your first channels to running several at once with agents.

agents can now easily reverse engineer software, so a competitor can rebuild many of your features faster than before

when they can copy the product, how you reach customers is the advantage they can't copy

every channel comes down to 2 choices, where it reaches the customer and how you get it (build, partner, pay or acquire)

a distribution channel is a repeatable way to reach people who could buy from you, such as your search rankings, a newsletter, a creator partnership or a listing in an app store

a channel depends on things a competitor can't rebuild with code, such as people who chose to follow you, subscribers who opted in, pages that rank and get cited, partners who trust you and customers who recommend you

Four Ways to Get a Channel

there are four ways to get a channel, and each way changes how fast you see results and what you keep:

1. Build

you create the channel and own it, such as your website, a newsletter, a YouTube channel or a community

building takes the longest, and you keep the audience, the content and the data

audiences your team builds on X, LinkedIn, TikTok or Instagram also count, but each person's audience goes with them if they leave'

2. Partner

you reach customers through someone who already has their attention and trust, such as a creator, an affiliate, an agency, an integration partner or an existing community

a partnership can start faster than a channel you build, and the relationship with the audience stays with the partner

when you hire someone for their audience, that audience still belongs to them

3. Pay

you buy access to an audience for as long as you pay, through ads, sponsorships and paid placements

paid access reaches people beyond your existing audience from the first day of a campaign

track what each customer costs and whether those customers stay

4. Acquire

you buy a channel that already exists, such as a website with useful content, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a community, a free tool with users or a whole business with customers who could use your product

acquiring gives you an audience on the first day, and that audience came for the previous owner's work, so check what transfers to you before you buy

> check whether the readers, viewers or members match your customer

> find out what leaves with the seller, because an audience that came for one writer, creator or community leader can follow that person when they leave

> look at where the traffic comes from, since a website that depends on search rankings can lose traffic after a search update

> check subscriber consent and data-transfer rules before you email an acquired list

> find out who stays after the sale, because the relationships with the team, contributors and members need to survive the acquisition

> plan how you introduce your product, since a publication that starts to promote its new owner can lose the trust that made it valuable

The 24 Channels by Funnel Stage

the channels reach people at four funnel stages, from before they know they need you to after they buy, and the ways to get each channel are in brackets after its name:

Before They Know They Need You

these channels reach people who have the problem and aren't looking for a product yet

1. founder & team audiences (build, partner)

post useful things and join conversations on X, LinkedIn, TikTok or Instagram, from the founder and from the rest of the team

people who follow your team can become customers, partners and referrals

Maor Shlomo built Base44 alone and shared the build on LinkedIn and X, and Wix bought it for $80M in cash about 6 months after launch

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2. YouTube channels (build, pay, acquire)

build a library of tutorials, product demos, comparisons and interviews that help people understand your category

you can start a channel, sponsor an existing one or acquire a relevant channel and its content

OpenAI bought TBPN, a daily live tech show on YouTube and X, in April 2026

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3. newsletters & email lists (build, pay, acquire)

give people a reason to subscribe and keep sending something they want to read

you can start your own newsletter, sponsor one or acquire a publication

HubSpot bought The Hustle in 2021, when its main newsletter had 1.5M subscribers

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4. creators & industry experts (partner, pay)

work with people your customers already follow and trust, from creators and KOLs (key opinion leaders) to clipping networks, where lots of small accounts post clips of your content and get paid by views

sponsor their content, create something together or build a long-term partnership where they use and understand your product

AI labs and startups run launches with creators every week now, and those launch posts rack up millions of impressions and bring in new users

you can launch creator campaigns like this on @creator_wire

5. press, podcasts & industry publications (build, partner, pay, acquire)

get covered by journalists, build your own show or publication, appear as a guest or sponsor one that reaches your customers

acquiring a niche publication can give you content, subscribers and relationships with contributors

press coverage also helps you show up in AI answers (Muck Rack's October 2026 report found that more than 84% of the links AI tools cite come from earned media)

6. events, webinars & workshops (build, partner, pay)

bring the right people together around a problem they need to solve

run your own webinars and workshops, partner with an existing organiser, speak at conferences or sponsor a trade show or hackathon your customers go to

HubSpot's INBOUND 2025 had more than 13,000 people in person and more than 550,000 livestream and on-demand views

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7. free tools, templates & open-source projects (build, acquire)

build something useful that introduces people to the problem your paid product solves, such as a calculator, a template, a dataset, a plugin or an open-source tool

you can also acquire an existing tool with a relevant user base

8. social, video & offline ads (pay)

use social, video, newsletter and podcast ads to reach people beyond your existing audience, including ads made by creators and offline ads like billboards, TV, print and direct mail

Anthropic ran its first Super Bowl ads on 8 February 2026, and Claude moved from 41st to 7th place on the US App Store in the days after (Appfigures estimates)

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9. direct outreach & sales (build)

build a repeatable way to find relevant companies, contact the right people and follow up, through email, calls, LinkedIn messages and demos

research each company before you contact them, because the offer needs to fit the person receiving it

Stripe's founders became known for the "Collison installation", when a founder agreed to try Stripe, they asked for the laptop and set it up on the spot

10. education & certification (build, partner, pay)

teach people the skill your product helps with, through courses, certifications, free student plans or campus programs

someone who learns a skill on your product is likely to bring it into their next job

OpenAI launched certificate courses in December 2025, and Anthropic's Claude Campus program gives student ambassadors a $3,600 stipend to run Claude clubs, discussion groups and workshops

While They Compare Options

these channels reach people who know they need a solution and are looking at the options

11. your website & search visibility (build, acquire)

build pages that answer the questions customers ask before buying, such as comparisons, use cases, pricing and tutorials

work on SEO and on visibility in AI answers (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews), because a page can rank in search and still not appear in AI answers

you can build this yourself or acquire a relevant website with useful content and an existing audience

Guillermo Rauch said in April 2025 that ChatGPT refers 10% of new Vercel signups

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12. review & comparison sites (build, pay)

build a presence on G2, Capterra and the review sites your customers use when they compare products

keep your listing current, ask customers for honest reviews and answer questions about how your product works

you can also pay for relevant placements on review sites, but the reviews need to come from customers

G2 agreed to buy Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp from Gartner in January 2026, and G2 says the combined sites reach more than 200 million software buyers a year

13. marketplaces & app stores (build)

make your product available where customers already look for a solution, such as app stores, plugin directories, browser extensions, industry-specific marketplaces and cloud marketplaces like AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud (the right ones depend on your product)

on a cloud marketplace, a company can buy your product through the cloud account it already pays for

CrowdStrike sold more than $1B through AWS Marketplace in 2024, and it says deals there are 4 times larger on average

14. launch & discovery platforms (build, pay, acquire)

launch on Product Hunt, share relevant work on Hacker News and submit your product to niche directories and launch newsletters

these platforms bring visitors around a launch or a major update, so give the people who discover you there a clear next step

you can also pay for a featured spot in many directories and launch newsletters, or acquire one

Supabase reached the top of Hacker News in May 2020 and got more than 1,400 signups in 7 days

15. search & AI assistant ads (pay)

put your ads in front of people when they search for a solution, on search engines and now inside ChatGPT

Through Tools and People They Trust

these channels put you in front of customers through the products, advisors and groups they already use

16. integrations & technology partners (build, partner)

connect your product to tools your customers already use

an integration gets you found through partner directories, shared campaigns with the partner (content, webinars and launches) and recommendations during customer onboarding

when Klaviyo filed to go public in 2023, 77.5% of its ARR came from customers who also use Shopify, and Klaviyo is the recommended email tool for Shopify Plus customers

17. AI agent surfaces (build, partner)

make your product available through MCP servers, connectors and apps inside AI assistants, so a customer's agent can use it inside their workflow (MCP is a standard way for AI agents to connect to outside tools)

give agents clear instructions for finding your tools, connecting an account and completing tasks, then list your server in relevant agent directories, because an MCP server alone doesn't guarantee discovery

Google opened a preview of its Connected Apps platform on 28 October 2026, so developers can build one app that runs inside AI Mode in Google Search and in the Gemini app

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18. agencies, consultants & resellers (partner)

work with businesses that already advise or serve your customers

give them the training and support to recommend, implement or sell your product as part of their service

HubSpot's partner agencies and the customers they brought in were about 25% of HubSpot's customers and about 49% of its revenue in 2025

19. affiliates & referral partners (partner)

give customers, creators and partners a reason to recommend you

set up a clear offer, tracking and a payment process

Lovable pays affiliates up to $100 for each first-time subscriber, and Nathan Barry said affiliates once drove a little over 30% of ConvertKit's revenue

20. communities (build, partner, acquire)

build a place where your customers exchange advice, ask questions and meet others doing similar work, such as a Discord, Telegram group, Slack community, forum or membership business

you can also partner with an existing community or acquire one with its team

Friends of Figma has more than 250 chapters in 82 countries, and Stripe bought the Indie Hackers community in 2017

21. businesses with an existing customer base (acquire)

buy a business whose customers could also use your product, such as a service business, a complementary product or a niche media company

check why those customers stay and whether your offer fits them before you treat the acquisition as a distribution channel

Cognition bought Windsurf in July 2025 and got $82M in ARR and more than 350 enterprise customers with it

22. bundles, pre-installs & default placement (partner, pay)

get a partner to include your product in something they already sell, such as a phone, a mobile plan or a software suite

with an integration, the customer still has to choose you, and with a bundle, the partner makes that choice for them

Airtel gave its 360 million customers 12 months of Perplexity Pro for free in July 2025, and Perplexity is built into Samsung's Galaxy S26 phones at the system level

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After They Buy

these channels use your product and your customers to reach the next customers

23. distribution built into the product (build)

make sharing part of the product, through shared documents, public pages, collaboration invites and customer-created content, and give sellers or creators on your platform a reason to bring their own customers

look for places where sharing is already useful to the customer (forcing an invitation into every action usually makes the product worse)

Lovable adds an "Edit with Lovable" badge to apps published on its free plan, and that link now sits on more than 20,000 websites

24. customer referrals & word of mouth (build)

make it easy for happy customers to introduce you to others

ask after a successful outcome, give them something useful to share and track which introductions become customers

an ambassador program can give your biggest fans perks for recommending you

Dropbox gave free storage to both the person who invited and the new user, and Drew Houston said the referral program permanently increased signups by 60%

How to Pick Your First 2 Distribution Channels

you can't run 24 channels well at the same time, so check each option against your customers and your team

> ask recent customers how they found you and what they checked before they bought

> match the channel to how customers buy, because customers who sign up on their own need to find you while they compare options, and a product sold through demos also needs outreach, agencies and events

> check who on your team can run it, since a team member with a relevant audience, someone who explains things well on video or an engineer who can build a free tool each make a different channel possible

> decide how long you can wait, because ads and launches bring visitors quickly, while search, YouTube, newsletters and communities take longer to build

> pick channels you can measure, because a channel you can't measure is hard to keep funding while you wait for results

> check that the audience fits what you sell, because a big following alone doesn't mean people will buy

I'd start with 2 channels at 2 different funnel stages, one you build and one you partner with or pay for

Measure Which Channels Bring Customers Who Convert

for each channel, track:

> how many people it reached
> how many of them became customers
> what it cost, including your team's time
> whether those customers stay and how much they spend over time

keep engagement numbers separate from sales results, because a post can get a lot of engagement and bring no customers

ask new customers how they heard about you, because podcasts, word of mouth and creator posts often don't show up in click tracking

for referrals and affiliates, check whether the referred customers become valuable customers before you increase the payouts

save the results where your agents can read them, so the next plan starts from what worked

How One Person Can Run Several Channels With Agents

I think roles are about to become much less defined, as one marketing engineer takes on more of the research, production and execution across several channels

a marketing engineer builds the systems behind the marketing, the shared company context, the connected tools and the agents that each run one workflow

give every agent the same shared company context (your offers, customers, brand guidelines and past results), so every channel makes the same claims about your product

at the start, you review everything an agent prepares before it gets published, goes to a partner or changes ad spend

here is the work an agent can do in each channel:

> for your website and search visibility, an agent reads Google Search Console and keyword data, finds customer questions that have no good page and drafts briefs and page updates for you to review

> for AI answers, an agent runs the questions your customers ask in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews every week and records which brands get cited or recommended

> for founder and team audiences, a content agent drafts posts from your shared company context, with a writing skill (an instruction file the agent follows) for each platform, and saves your edits for future drafts

> for creators and industry experts, an agent lists the creators, newsletters and podcasts your customers follow, checks audience fit from their recent content and drafts outreach for you to review

> for direct outreach and sales, an agent researches companies that match your customer profile, finds the right person and a relevant reason to contact them, and drafts the first message for you to review

> for review sites and communities, an agent checks new reviews and questions in your category and drafts answers for you to post

> for AI agent surfaces, an agent tests your MCP server the way a customer's agent would, and checks that it finds the right tool, connects an account and completes the task

> for ads, an agent compares campaign results with your targets and prepares new creative variations and campaign changes for you to review

start with monitoring and drafts, then allow specific actions once you've tested the workflow, and write down which actions still need your review

to test a candidate for taste and judgment, give them a problem to work through with an agent and ask them to explain their choices, including where they disagreed with the agent

I'd want to see how they think, what they notice and whether they understand who the work is for

Find the Funnel Stage Where Competitors Win Your Customers

list every channel you run under the 4 funnel stages, before they know they need you, while they compare options, through tools and people they trust and after they buy

the stage where you have no channel is where a competitor potentially wins your ICP

we run and create distribution opportunities for tech companies at @LunarStrategy and @EspressioAI - Reach out for a free strategy call