By now, most people know about PMF as a key problem to solve. Statups strive to PMG, and a never-ending printing press of Lean Startup articles evangelizes the concept farther into all niches of tech entrepeneurship. Icnreasingly, the distribution problem is becoming more important, and much less is written about it. This article points to that insight, especially the part below, which is interesting as we in Web3 think of "onboarding the masses" and think of it as a PMF rather than a distribution problem. How do they differ? One way they differ is strategic partnerships, such as Google did: “Solving the default use case is one of the biggest hurdles we have,” Ramaswamy told me early on. “People forget that Google’s success was not a result of only having a better product. There were an incredible number of shrewd distribution decisions made to make that happen.” Google reportedly pays Apple as much as $15 billion a year to be the default search engine in Apple’s Safari browser on various devices. Google also pays Mozilla to be the primary search engine in the Firefox browser — reported to be upwards of $450 million a year. It has similar deals with other device makers and browser developers, even with wireless carriers. Samsung briefly explored ending its deal with Google in 2023 but decided against it for various reasons, including “the impact on its wide-ranging business relations with Google,” The Wall Street Journal reported. What might some partnerships for Web3 startups look like, the kind that solves distribution problems? It's not the kind of partnership that says "MegaCorp is using XYZ Web3 tech". It also doesn't seem to be the kind of partnership between a MegaCorp and its Web3 offshoot--it didn't work well with Kin's audience, or with Gari's audience. What might such a partnership look like?
I think many B2C founders have a blind spot for B2B partnerships, and it's hurting them as partnerships can open a new distribution space. The partnerships I'm aware of are primarily focused on "MegaCorp using XYZ web3 tech". I remember Polygon working with Reddit & Disney and Solana working with VISA & Shopify. In non-infra, there's Farcaster working closely with Coinbase & ZORA. I also know that Base Name Service scaled via partnerships with NFT communities :)