Opportunity area · theme founders discuss · intermediate

Distribution approach for starting excavation

Distribution · Starting excavation spreads when the artifact (checklist, report, invite, invoice) pulls the next user—not when the landing page gets adjectives. Seed audience: operators between jobs. Original insight: the competitor is the buyer’s tolerance for chaos around “starting excavation.”

Problem

The discussion noise hides the ICP. Different titles show up in the same thread, so founders build for everyone and retain no one. Unexpected challenge: community fame attracts wrong-fit users who want entertainment, not a paid pilot. Hidden cost: permissions, exports, and “who owns this spreadsheet?” politics.

Target user

Operators accountable for outcomes when “starting excavation” breaks

Proposed solution

If angle is validation: freeze features; maximize evidence. If distribution: freeze features; maximize channel reps. Distribution sprint (30 days): one channel, daily reps, weekly conversion review. Features only if activation is already clear. Counter-intuitive advice: stop reading adjacent threads for a week; talk to five humans instead. Distribution bottleneck: warm intros dry up; build a boring weekly motion you can run alone. One caution: do not hire until five customers renew or expand without you rewriting the product each time. One recommendation: open the [Idea database](/ideas) siblings for this theme (discussion / validation / distribution) and keep only the angle you can execute. Practical next step: capture ten verbatim buyer phrases; use them as page copy. Real-world pattern: Shopify went deep on merchant workflows instead of being every app—depth beats horizontal novelty. Straight take: discussion energy is a hint, not a mandate. Most threads should become “not now.”