What Building Without an Audience Is Teaching Me About Distribution

This week confirmed something uncomfortable but important:

You don’t “start distribution” when you launch. You start learning distribution when nothing works.

I’ve been shipping consistently: features, landing pages, demos. And sharing them across Reddit, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Most of it landed in silence.

At first, that feels like failure. But it’s actually signal.

The wrong assumption I had

I thought distribution was mostly about output:

• post consistently
• share updates
• talk about what I’m building

So I did exactly that.

I posted product updates on Twitter and LinkedIn. I shared “building in public” notes. I expected at least some pull.

Instead, I got almost nothing.

And that forced me to look closer.

What Twitter and LinkedIn revealed

Twitter and LinkedIn didn’t fail because the content was bad.

They failed because I had no context yet.

No audience. No shared journey. No reason for people to stop scrolling.

On those platforms, posts don’t compete on usefulness. They compete on familiarity.

If people don’t already know you, product updates feel like noise.

That’s not a platform problem. That’s an expectation problem.

What Reddit made painfully clear

Reddit, on the other hand, is less forgiving and more honest.

Here’s the pattern I started noticing:

• “Here’s what I built” → ignored or removed
• “Here’s what I learned the hard way” → engagement
• “I was wrong about X” → replies
• Links without context → downvotes

Reddit doesn’t reward products. It rewards recognition.

People don’t want to discover your startup. They want to recognize their own problems in your story.

Distribution is pattern matching, not broadcasting

The biggest shift for me this week:

I stopped asking where should I post? and started asking when does this belong in the conversation?

That reframes distribution entirely.

Instead of publishing, the job becomes:

• read daily
• notice repeating pain points
• respond with lived experience
• earn curiosity before sharing anything

Distribution becomes repeatable once it’s contextual.

Why “building in public” didn’t work at first

“Building in public” sounds simple:

just share what you’re building

But without context, it’s just updates floating in space.

What works better early on is sharing:

• decisions you got wrong
• assumptions that didn’t hold
• uncertainty you’re working through

People follow judgment, not progress logs.

The uncomfortable truth

Right now, my startups don’t need more features.

They need:

• clearer language
• fewer assumptions
• better problem framing
• more conversations before shipping

Distribution isn’t a channel problem. It’s a clarity problem.

What I’m doing next

For the next few weeks, my focus is simple:

• fewer posts
• more replies
• zero links unless asked
• writing only when I’ve earned context

No launch pressure. No growth hacks.

Just learning how people actually talk about the problems I’m trying to solve.

Final thought

If you’re building with no audience:

Silence doesn’t mean you’re early. It means you’re still learning the language of your users.

And that’s part of the job.