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.
