“the key was almost like this distribution this go to market this how are we going to get to Consumers and that other person or I guess 799 other people just didn't have anything that was good enough to win”

Win with distribution, not the best product

Aaron's FTC entry beat 799 others despite some having better algorithms, because his submission focused on how consumers would actually get to the product — not on technical superiority. The FTC CTO said the idea looked 'stupid enough to work' and picked it over more sophisticated approaches. Nail your distribution story before you finalize your feature set; judges and customers alike care more about reach than optimization.