sari

You and your community members already use Slack for work.

"Harder" might not be the right word. Let me rephrase: Launching a successful product is riskier than ever and more dependent on random forces than ever. In the past, a producer could rely on their own manufacturing capacity and on relationships with powerful gatekeepers to guarantee a product's success. It did not always work, but it often worked.

The takeaway is this: individuals have more power than ever before, and they depend on companies for their survival less than ever before. But I don’t think the real freedom here is working alone; it’s the freedom to choose how, and with whom, to work.

In particular, focusing on product/market fit before community may handicap you from building a fiercely loyal community, even once you have “exited” to it. An underappreciated consequence of this is that you may be forced to rely on copyright as a moat in order to continue accruing value.