How Perplexity got its users

UNFAIR EDGEPaid advertisingscale-upb2cruns ads

Distribution bought through carrier and device maker deals plus a massive media budget. This channel gets negotiated in a boardroom.

Read from signals. Consistent with what is publicly observable, but nobody confirmed it. Check before you quote it.

Can you run this?

UNFAIR EDGE

It worked because of something they already had, or a window that has closed. Copying it will not reproduce it.

The edge you do not have: Capital that buys preinstallation agreements

Your time

Ongoing

Your money

Hundreds of millions

First signal

Immediate

Upside

Price of entry

Paid advertising in 2026

Available to everyone, so no edge in itself. You are not buying growth, you are buying speed on economics that already work.

Generic version of this channel. The detailed card is not written yet.

1
Do not start until 30-day retention holds
done whenDay-30 retention holds. If it does not, you are buying a leak.
2
Ship at least 20 creatives a month. Audiences fatigue faster than targeting
done when20 creatives shipped this month. Count them.
3
Let the algorithm target. Spend your energy on the message
done whenYou changed the message this week and not the targeting.
4
Kill any campaign whose payback outruns your cash runway
done whenPayback in days is on your dashboard, and it is shorter than your runway.

read from perplexity.ai, live

“Perplexity”

7 public pages

In your chat

Carries the play above, and is written to tell you no when this channel is out of reach for you.

In your editor

The same twelve channels as an agent skill. It reads your repository and eliminates what you cannot run. Open source, MIT.

curl -o ~/.claude/skills/howtodistribute/SKILL.md https://howtodistribute.com/skill.md

Multi-billion valuation

Describe it. You get back the channel I would run in your place, the 30-day plan, and the number at which you stop.