14 April 2026
How do you know if your marketing is failing, or if your product just isn't ready yet?
Most founders confuse the two. And it's an easy mistake because the symptom looks identical: nobody is buying. Here's how I split it. If people who get a close look at your product, through a demo, a trial, a direct conversation, still don't want it, that's a product problem. If they get it and want it, but you can't get enough people in front of it, that's a distribution problem. The harder truth is that both questions are often just cover for a third one nobody wants to ask: have you actually tried to find ten real customers yet? Not with a landing page. Not with ads. With direct, uncomfortable conversations where someone tells you exactly what they think. That's where the answer lives.