This is the post I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write yet, because the version of it I imagined writing was supposed to come after I’d figured something out. I have not figured something out. I’m writing it anyway, because the previous post in this series ended with a promise to write the failure-mode counterpart — what doesn’t work when you build around micropayments, what assumptions about user behavior turn out to be wrong — and the most honest answer to that question, two months into shipping Sats Channel, is that the assumptions about users aren’t the ones that are breaking. The assumption about getting users in the first place is. The thesis, stated upfront so you can decide whether to keep reading: the belief that quietly shapes most independent product work — if it’s good enough, distribution will follow — is probably the single most expensive false belief in indie software. It’s expensive because it’s almost-true.…