San Francisco | July 8, 2025 | Harborview Restaurant + Bar | Distribution is Your Daddy
Netflix is dropping $18 billion on content in 2025. You'll watch maybe three shows. They don't care.
They're not buying entertainment. They're buying your default setting. That muscle memory when you grab the remote. They own the habit, not the content.
This keeps us up: Distribution might be the only game that actually matters.
Every creator on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube is basically digital farming on somebody else's land. Massive reach. Zero deed. Millions of followers. Minimum wage returns.
You built your dream house in Zuckerberg's backyard. Now you're shocked he changed the locks.
But some operators cracked a different code. They use platforms like fishing nets, not aquariums. Every follower gets converted to an email. Every viral moment becomes owned access.
They're playing chess while everyone else plays checkers.
Questions We Can't Stop Asking
The distribution puzzle has us twisted:
Why do platforms give free reach to future competitors?
How are people building eight-figure businesses on email lists?
What happens when creators become their own CNN?
Is platform dependency just digital sharecropping with better graphics?
We know newsletter publishers reaching 4 million people without algorithm prayers. Former TikTok executives who built the very systems enslaving creators. Entertainment lawyers who bake distribution guarantees into every contract like it's grandma's recipe.
They all see something others miss.
The Infrastructure Truth
Studios don't make better movies. They guarantee screens. Labels don't develop better artists. They own the machine that makes hits. Publishers might not edit better. They control the shelves.
Quality is debatable. Distribution is mathematical.
The creators building real wealth own their pipes:
Email lists that survive platform apocalypses
Communities people pay to enter like nightclubs
Content libraries generating traffic while they sleep
Tech they control like digital landlords
They treat distribution like oxygen. Because what's brilliant content if nobody sees it?
The Compound Game Nobody Mentions
Direct distribution creates predictable money physics. Your 100,000 email subscribers equal mathematical certainty. Your million TikTok followers equal maybe, possibly, if the algorithm's in a good mood.
But it compounds deeper:
Instant market feedback without middlemen
Cross-promotion that multiplies itself
Infrastructure that appreciates like Manhattan real estate
Creative freedom without community guidelines
Is this the future or just another hustle?
The San Francisco Session
July 8. Eight people who escaped the platform plantation gather in San Francisco.
Including the founder whose newsletter empire reaches 4 million without begging Zuck. The former head of growth who launched TikTok's creator fund (and knows why it's broken). The entertainment lawyer who gets first-look deals with distribution baked in like birthday cake.
Not a workshop. A war room. Sharp minds dissecting the difference between owning your audience and renting it by the hour.
The room fits eight because real talk requires trust.
Applications close June 24.