Product management

“It’s better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product. If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.”

Peter Thiel, “Zero to One”

“Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.”

Peter Thiel, “Zero to One”

“The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market.”

“It was much easier to reach a few thousand people who really needed our product than to try to compete for the attention of millions of scattered individuals.”

“What we did, is we really killed ourselves in the first couple of years to always be in all of the app store launches on day one. Whenever a new device or platform would come out, we would work days and nights for months before that to make sure Evernote was there and supporting the new device or operating system in the app store on the first day.... See more

“Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true. No matter how strong your product—even if it easily fits into already established habits and anybody who tries it likes it immediately—you must still support it with a strong distribution plan.”

Peter Thiel, “Zero to One”