Uber-connector, entrepreneur and marketer. Co-founder of Alorum, Gazelle Lab, and the 2013 USASBE Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Program at USF St. Petersburg. The 2013 ASBE Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year, TBTF Technology Leader of the Year, Small Business Influencer Awards Community Choice Winner and Top 100 Champion, and SBA State of Florida 2013 Business Advocate of the Year.
I appreciate Tom's response, and would love to wholeheartedly agree. That being said, I am simply going to take a divergent perspective for balance.
When a company starts, a good enough product is good enough when it allows for sales, which are dependent on distribution. Therefore, good distribution trumps good product at first; however, as you pointed out, the tables eventually turn.
Almost always, the promise of a product is enough to create a customer at startup, distribution allows for that customer to generate a sale.
Think about it this way: nobody ever needed a blanket with arms - there was no real compelling "job to be done" - but distribution created the hit with a just good enough product.
Remember when twitter was first released? It crashed constantly and hardly anyone worth following was present. But the system of distribution was a thing of beauty.
All else being equal, distribution creating sales buys runway for product development. So, I'm completely in agreement with Jeff Bezos on this one.