At a time when AI products are blowing out and homogenizing seriously, function is no longer the key to victory, and the real winner is “communication power”. This article reveals how AI products can achieve social fission within 48 hours through the explosive growth case of Base44, an AI company in Silicon Valley, and points out that products that do not tell stories and cannot be seen will quickly “die” in fierce competition.
In this era of product proliferation and fragmented user attention, distribution is no longer a matter of “thinking about the product after finishing the product”, but a key variable in whether the product can survive.
Anton Osika, co-founder of Lovable, bluntly said: “Today’s AI entrepreneurs must accept a new rule – if your product fails to trigger social spread in the first 48 hours, you may be sentenced to ‘invisible death’. ”
In other words, communication is no longer the icing on the cake, but the threshold for AI products to survive.
This is not an isolated case. Base44, which has just been acquired for $80 million, has repeatedly emphasized that his success depends not on financing or channels, but on the ultimate understanding and execution of “communication power”.
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Today’s AI entrepreneurs are facing a new distribution paradigm: they do not need to spend budgets or buy volumes, but rely on each product iteration to maximize the communication effect in a social network-dominated context.
In today’s article, Mr. Crow will talk about – what has changed in distribution in the AI era?
01 A revelation worth $80 million
Not long ago, a seemingly “inconspicuous” acquisition quietly swept the screen in Silicon Valley: Wix acquired Base44, an AI programming company that was only 6 months old, for $80 million.
In the primary market, which starts at hundreds of millions of dollars, this price is not amazing. But don’t forget, Base44 has only 9 employees and was founded less than 200 days ago.
Being able to sell $80 million in half a year, Base44 is no means luck. In just three weeks of launch, it delivered: 400,000 users and $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR)
In the process, he not only did not take a penny in financing, but also experienced two Israeli wars.
Recently, in an interview, Base44 founder Maor Shlomo reflected on his entrepreneurial journey. He admitted that what really makes Base44 run out is not how advanced the technology is, but the ultimate understanding and implementation of “communication power”.
Base44’s first Product Hunt release can be said to have ended dismally – no list, no likes, no retweets. The only turning point was that a developer took the initiative to leave a message saying that he was willing to pay and recommended the product on social platforms, bringing the first wave of fission.
Maor realized that a user who is willing to stay, speak, and retweet is more important than 100 likes.
In the later years, Maor spent a lot of thought on building product communication. Specifically, Maor uses three methods:
First, let users “participate in development” instead of “waiting for products”.
Maor doesn’t hide the development process, but builds it thoroughly publicly. On Base44’s Notion page, you’ll find product changelogs, bug logs, and even code design ideas. Behind each update, it triggers interaction between developers – asking questions, liking, and reusing.
This is a social mechanism where developers look at each other: content is not written for investors, but for peers.
Second, to encourage users to share their works, Maor firmly believes in one principle: development is display, display is dissemination.
In Maor’s view, every time a user displays a work (application), it is an active “advertisement”.
For example, every time a user develops a project, the system will automatically generate a “display page”, which not only binds the development log and generates process records, but also matches hashtags and post templates, and can be shared to LinkedIn or X with one click.
At the same time, Base44 also held a hackathon that cost only $5,000, attracting 3,000 projects to participate.
Third, in the choice of communication platform, Maor also pursues precision. From the beginning, Base44 has focused on just one platform: LinkedIn.
The reason is simple, a large number of technical users are gathered here, which is more suitable for talking about the development process and showing results. There is no distraction of “full-platform operation”, but the efficiency of a single communication path is strengthened.
In the process, Base44 runs a minimalist growth flywheel:
Development → Use tools → Automatically generate pages → Social platforms publish → Be seen → reuse → new users → develop again……
Behind the successful sale of Base44, it also highlights a new trend in the AI era: in the competition of AI tools, function is only the threshold, and communication is the lever. Often the winner is not the most functional, but the one who is the best at telling stories and being seen the most.
02 Behind the distribution revolution, the “golden 48 hours” of AI products
The outbreak of Base44 is not an isolated case.
In Europe, an AI startup called Lovable achieved $17 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just three months, equivalent to about 120 million yuan, becoming one of the fastest-growing AI tools.
Its co-founder Anton Osika bluntly said in an interview with a16z: “Technology is not the flashpoint, communication power is.” ”
He said that AI entrepreneurs today must be aware of a new rule:
In the past, entrepreneurs could spend months polishing their products, optimizing user experience, and then seeking distribution strategies; And now, if the product does not form social proliferation in the first 48 hours, it is likely to be sentenced to “invisible death”.
This means that communication is no longer a plus for growth, but a threshold for the survival of AI products.
Why has transmission become so critical?
On the one hand, AI tool releases are unprecedentedly dense, homogenized is serious, and social algorithms are more uncontrollable, making it increasingly difficult to achieve real explosive growth.
On the other hand, traditional traffic channels are rapidly failing, and the growth team is finding that every marketing channel is becoming less and less usable. Paid advertising and SEO may attract new people in the short term, but it is difficult to bring high-quality retention in consumer-grade AI.
As a result, we see a new distribution paradigm taking shape:
First, product development is becoming an open content show.
In today’s AI entrepreneurship circle, a new paradigm is emerging: build in public. To put it simply, they no longer wait for the product to be polished before releasing it, but on social platforms to talk and talk, collect feedback while talking, and iterate while receiving feedback.
Ishan Sharma, an AI entrepreneur with 3 million followers on YouTube, said bluntly:
Only when you send it out will someone know what you are doing. No one sees you, not even investors know you exist. When you can iterate on a product quickly, each update is a new opportunity to showcase and promote it.
Ishan summarized his methodology: build a workflow with AI tools → take screenshots → post logic → attach reuse links → and other feedback before iterating. This is not just publicity, but also the use of the Internet to iterate on the product itself.
This logic is a bit like Cluely in the recent fire. Cluely’s product iteration logic is that content comes first, product follows; The user uses it first, and the data decides.
Their content strategy is like a “distribution radar”: publish 100 short videos and find 10 materials that bring real usage behavior; Then make product adjustments and a new round of content testing around those 10 until you run out of the direction of “willing to continue to use”.
Second, really effective distribution is not to find “celebrities to bring goods”, but to let vertical native creators speak for you.
AI native users are becoming a new generation of communication nodes. They may not have many fans, but they have a strong influence in vertical circles such as the developer community, Reddit, and Discord.
Luma AI has recently adopted a similar strategy, opening up early access to a small group of AI-native creators. This kind of “vertical opinion leader” is far more likely to drive word of mouth and reuse than Big V.
Third, growth data is no longer a hidden secret, but also an active communication asset.
Genspark once posted a screen post on social platforms: “Our team of 20 people has achieved an annual income of $36 million in 45 days, no advertising, no delivery, all by word of mouth.” And with pictures showing the recently released product line.
Companies such as Lovable, Krea, and Bolt are also constantly posting their own milestones, and are willing to publicly review even if they are failed attempts. Anton Osika posted two months after Lovable’s release to celebrate its $10 million annual revenue and analyzed how the product outperformed the competition in a long-threaded manner.
All this shows that the logic of AI entrepreneurship is changing from “behind closed doors” to “public collaboration”.
What you do is not only a product, but also a social show, a set of content mechanisms, and a co-creation game with the market. Communication is not just the task of the marketing department, but a growth weapon that the CEO and product team must master.
03 Summary
In the past, every major technological change was ultimately a revolution in distribution methods.
Today, AI is becoming the next generation of computing platforms and quietly giving birth to a new “distribution paradigm”. This technological leap is not only a functional improvement, but also a deeper change in how information is discovered, how content is seen, and how value is transmitted.
Just like the threshold for content creation has been lowered, giving birth to “disintermediated content stars” such as YouTube creators, Douyin influencers, and podcasters; The cost of code generation has returned to zero, which is also reshaping the ecosystem of software development – those “underdogs” who once had no titles and resources, but had expression and creativity, began to surface and become the next generation of “code stars” and “application creators”.
The premise of all this is: you must be seen.
The first to capture this was the a16z. Before investing in Cluery, they had learned the essence of media strategy from Hollywood all-around agency CAA – distribution was no longer an “option” outside of the product, but at the core of competitiveness.
In an era where content is highly homogeneous and attention is extremely scarce, trust has become a top-level variable in the business model. And when the model becomes free and available everywhere, the real winner is “who can occupy the user’s distribution entrance more”.
We’ve long been used to algorithms deciding what we see and hear: TikTok recommends videos for you, Spotify decides playlists. In the future, models will also determine where code runs, what stack it uses, and how it is delivered. The default value has changed, and active selection has become a burden.
As the cost of everything continues to fall, attention begins to shift to “upstream”:
the bottom layer is computing power, which is penetrating from centralized data centers to terminal devices;
The middle layer is the context, and the model constructs understanding through our historical records, behavioral trajectories, and preferences.
At the top is trust, which is accumulated over a long period of expression, interaction and cashing, and determines whether an agent is qualified to act “on our behalf”.
In this hierarchy, trust is the scarce and most leveraged asset.
And those who can continue to speak out, are articulate, and know how to build trust are not only more visible – they are also more likely to wield new distribution powers. This restructuring of distribution will redefine who is the “influential person” of the next era.
