The harsh reality of building in 2025: creating software has never been easier and cheaper, but succeeding with it has never been harder.
After hundreds of conversations with builders, the pattern is always the same: iterate, pivot, refine, repeat—until something finally resonates with users. Building towards product-market fit is what they signed up for and what they're passionate about.
But here's what they all discovered: even after finally building something people genuinely love and use, they hit an even bigger wall—distribution.
We live in an era where the cost of building has dropped to nearly zero, yet getting attention for what you've built has become the scarcest resource. Builders have all the tools to create fantastic products, apps, and experiences, but they lack an easy way to attract attention to what they build.
Traditional advertising requires serious cash. Ad networks, influencer partnerships, and paid campaigns are expensive. For bootstrapped builders, spending $5K on ads might mean two months of runway.
Building an audience is a completely different skill set. It's a long, slow journey that requires consistent content creation, community engagement, and personal branding. Many builders just want to build—they didn't sign up to become content creators or social media personalities.
Raising funds has become harder than ever. In a market that moves this fast, even investors are risk-averse. They want to see significant traction before writing checks, creating a chicken-and-egg problem: you need money to gain traction, but you need traction to get money.
This creates a brutal reality: you've built something amazing, but you can't get it in front of the people who need it.
This is where product coins enter the picture—not as a magic solution to all builder problems, but as a new tool in the builder's toolbox.
Product coins represent one potentially powerful approach for bootstrapping ventures:
They reward early supporters and believers
They generate initial funding without traditional fundraising
They enable $0 marketing budget campaigns
But tokens aren't for everyone. Many builders avoid launching tokens because:
It feels like a huge commitment they're not ready for
The mental overhead is overwhelming
It requires maintaining a public profile and constant community engagement
Regulatory and tax concerns create uncertainty
Even those that did launch their own coin, often get stuck at low valuation mcaps, that make it hard to utilize their tokens effectively for development or meaningful incentives.
Tokens were designed as coordination tools—mechanisms to bring people together, align interests, and create shared value. But what if we've been using them all wrong?
What if coins aren't for everyone? What if launching your own token isn't the solution for most builders? What if there's another path you should explore before making that big commitment?
The problem isn't tokens themselves—it's how we've approached them. While builders struggle in isolation, fighting for the same scarce attention, the very tools meant to coordinate and collaborate have become yet another competitive battlefield.
But there's a different way to think about this. Instead of everyone launching their own tokens and competing, what if builders could coordinate first and compete less?
Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon....
Lior
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