Product & Distribution as a Moat
Content becomes a moat, when it becomes doctrine. Distribution becomes a moat, when you have discipleship
I’m back to writing again because I realized it’s far easier to push out certain thoughts, get clarity by putting it down to paper, and I can crowdsource ideas from those around me.
Josh sent this to our chat and I thought this was a good point. Raised also by Dinesh (our angel) and I think we have done well (relatively) in this area.
To me, execution is the best moat out there. You find out what business model and flywheel works faster than your competitors out there. You’re uncovering the local and global maxima (of sorts).
Within execution, you have your 2 main functions - product and marketing. To me, this “new collar” (I’ll cover this definition in another post) job is going to be the main skills that separates everyone else. Thus, product and marketing (distribution) are the 2 sub-moats.
Product as a moat is quite easy to understand.
Distribution as a moat is unfortunately something harder to understand for most. I think Kinobi has done well in this aspect based on 2 things:
CAC is extremely low. We don’t believe in paid ads. We believe in earned media. We’re a “church” and a cult who believe in Kinobi rituals. Ever seen a church buy ads? They don’t need to.
We got early on TikTok, and we hire great personalities.
I’ve been researching the content play for a long time. There’s Matthew Ball, Lenny’s Newsletter, Not Boring, Divinations, Benedict Evans, etc.
The unbundling of the university means that this whole learning shizbang is really just being a media company - “content and conversation”.
Content is abundant. The key is to find people who are trusted influencers in knowledge and validated by others, that can package and distribute the content. It becomes a flywheel when you have these people grow from non-believers to churchgoers, to leading the cell group and finally to pastoring the church.
This whole content game in education is exactly what churches have been doing for centuries. I grew up in church. I’m Christian. I’ve seen this flywheel spin millions of times.
In church, you have the Bible. It’s 66 books that was written a long time ago. Words didn’t change. But you have a huge following of people writing about it, analyzing it, making sense of it. Honestly if I read Psalm 23 today compared to a year ago, I feel and have different opinions of it based on my life experiences now. (I digress to say that the Bible is a living book to me, but that’s another topic). That’s the same thing with career advice. Honestly the fundamentals are the same, like the 66 books. But, how you represent it, what it feels to you, and how you learn about it (visual, kinesthetic, etc.), makes it complex such that people can’t stop writing about it.
Next thing you have in church is people. The thing about people is that people have loyalty, politics, self-interest all rolled into one. We’re complex and flawed.
People are amazing because you realize that people are passionate about things. During a conversation, ask someone about their favourite thing and they can talk for hours on end. Anyone. Introvert or extrovert doesn’t matter. And people actually make the content king.
What do I mean by that?
Religious beliefs aside, the church has fought over centuries with huge divisions over one thing - doctrine. What is doctrine? Essentially it is just a belief on what
Content becomes a moat, when it becomes doctrine. Distribution becomes a moat, when you have discipleship (i.e. when you have an entire set of pastors, elders, deacons, priests and the whole hierarchy stating that this is the best way things are to be run).
Good distribution provides the organic support and culture within each other to run independently by itself, while drawing from inspiration, belief and support from the mothership.
Good distribution is when people feel so good using the product that they think things are priceless. They feel the community, the love, that the product understands them and truly uplifts them in their soul.
The next phase of growth is to think of people as products (or in a product strategy way).
I’m excited.