Distribution and positioning
How do we reach customers, and where do we launch first?
Channels, defaults, launch sequencing, which customers to sell to first, positioning and self-preferencing.
16
47%
33%
20%
What the cases suggest
Young companies that chose their first users carefully did well in this record: Facebook one campus at a time, VisiCalc on the Apple II, Excel on the Macintosh, Stripe sold to developers. Leaders’ distribution decisions in the record were mostly about using their position to favour their own products, and those were judged weak in process and drew legal challenges.
What separated the decisions that worked
- Successful launches picked a beachhead where the product was clearly better and the users were connected to each other.
- Self-preferencing by dominant platforms, such as Google’s shopping results and Amazon’s Buy Box, produced short-term gains and long-term legal and regulatory costs.
Where this evidence is weak
The leaders’ cases are concentrated in recent antitrust disputes, which colours the group.
By who decided
| Decision-maker | Cases | Paid off | Mixed | Backfired | Too early |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market leader | 4 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Challenger | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Young company | 7 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Researchers and communities | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The cases
Each links to the essay, memo or road not taken where the decision is described and judged, with its sources.
- Launch first on the Apple II, a hobbyist machine, at about $100 A product that lets individuals solve their own problem can enter an organisation without asking permission.
- Build only for the IBM PC, in assembly language for speed, and integrate spreadsheet, charts and database Win the platform that is about to become the standard, and optimise ruthlessly for it.
- Launch Excel on the Macintosh first, designed around the mouse and a graphical interface, before bringing it to Windows If you cannot beat the leader on today’s platform, be the best product on the next one.
- Make email free, run it in the browser, and put an invitation at the foot of every message Build the invitation into the core action, so that using the product spreads it.
- Promote “open source” as a practical development method, dropping the moral language of “free software,” to win over business How you name something decides who will listen, and what they will hear.
- Require real names and college email addresses, and open one campus at a time Launch where you can reach density quickly, and grow only as fast as the product can stay reliable.
- Sell online payments to software developers, through a simple programming interface that hid banks, card networks and compliance Abstracting a complex system into a simple interface can change who makes the buying decision.
- Launch a general-purpose credit card by mailing 60,000 unsolicited cards to residents of Fresno at once A network that needs two sides at once may justify a bold launch, but the risks of the launch fall on people who did not choose them.
- Pay browser and device makers to make Google the default search engine, under revenue-sharing contracts that in many cases excluded rivals When you are dominant, paying to be the default is a different act from earning the choice, and courts will judge it as one.
- Position a group chat tool as organisational transformation, and make the team’s job selling that change rather than features. Customers rarely shop for a new category; describe the change in their work, not the tool.
- End its Netflix distribution deal, keep its films for its own service and launch Disney+ at a low price A supplier that becomes a rival must decide which business it is in, and pay for the answer in both.
- Deliberately break Apple’s and Google’s payment rules in Fortnite, invite its removal from both stores and sue both companies Challenging a platform’s rules may require a challenger large enough to survive the platform’s response.
- Position OS/2 2.0 and Warp as "a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows", emphasising their ability to run DOS and Windows programs. Compatibility with a rival's platform buys users at the price of strengthening that platform.
- Show its own shopping comparison service prominently in results while rival comparison sites appeared as ordinary links lower down When your ranking is the market, your own products cannot compete in it on unequal terms.
- Sell its own products in competition with marketplace sellers while holding their sales data and controlling which offer wins the Buy Box If you run the market, the rules you apply to yourself are the ones others will judge you by.
- Build a complete platform for communicating devices, Magic Cap and Telescript, licensed to manufacturers and carriers through a large alliance. A platform that depends on infrastructure others must build is a bet on their schedule as well as yours.
Other kinds of decision
- Opening or closing
- Business model and pricing
- Make, buy or partner
- Acquisitions and sales
- Technology bets
- Product design
- New categories and markets
- Focus, exit and investment
- Trust, safety and privacy
- Executing large change
- Organisation and governance
- Public rules
Shrikant Kumar. “Distribution and positioning.” The Telos Decision Record, Telos, version of 2026-11-03. https://shrikantk.com/record/distribution/