Distribution is a power law, not a spread

The single most important fact about channels is that they obey a power law. When a company has genuine product-channel fit, it draws more than seventy per cent of its growth from one channel. Not a balanced split across four. One channel doing the heavy lifting, with the rest contributing scraps. The companies that manage to achieve fit with two channels at once are rare, and they end up being monsters precisely because that combination is so unusual. Two is the outlier, not the target.

Why founders get this exactly wrong

The instinct to diversify is deep and, in most parts of building a company, correct. You diversify suppliers, you diversify customers, you diversify revenue. So it feels natural to diversify channels too, to avoid putting all your growth on one fragile bet. But distribution does not reward that instinct. The power law means the expected value of going deep on one channel is far higher than the expected value of spreading the same effort across several, even after accounting for the risk that your one channel disappoints.

Distribution kills more startups than product

Here is the line worth pinning above your desk: poor distribution, not a poor product, is the number one cause of startup failure. Almost every failed startup has a product. What it lacks is enough customers. The corollary is liberating. If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have a great business. You do not need three channels humming. You need one that genuinely works, and most companies never get even that, because they spent their scarce effort trying for several and nailing none.

What this means for your strategy

Concentration is not a compromise you accept because you are small. It is the optimal strategy because distribution is a power law. The lean founder who picks one channel and goes deep is not playing a weaker version of the well-resourced company's game. They are playing the same game the winners play, just without the budget to waste on the channels that would not have worked anyway.

So treat the power law as licence. You are not being timid by refusing to spread. You are being correct. The fragility you fear from concentration is real but late: it only bites once a channel saturates, and by then you will have a working machine and the cash to fund the next search. The fragility you should actually fear is the one that kills companies quietly, which is being thinly present everywhere and meaningfully present nowhere.