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Marketing is probably the most important skill for a founder to have. You have to market to raise money. You have to market to hire employees. You have to marke

by harryh 7y ago

Marketing is probably the most important skill for a founder to have. You have to market to raise money. You have to market to hire employees. You have to market to get customers. It's especially hard at the beginning when you have to get the first of all of those things. If you want to start a company, you should get good at it.

brenden2 7y ago
Congrats, it sounds like you have everything figured out. I wish you the best.
- tptacek 7y ago
  I don't know if it's helpful or not for you to hear this, but as another serial startup person, I strongly second what he's saying. And marketing is a learnable skill, not a personality trait. It can even be engineered! It's also how you acquire social capital, and a "brand". Another way to think about it is: by writing comments like the one you wrote above, about the unfairness of it all, you're already marketing. You're just doing it badly. I don't want to sound like I'm picking on you, because this is an incredibly prevalent handicap among smart tech people.
  - brenden2 7y ago
    I appreciate you taking the time to try and be helpful. Perhaps I'm just not cut out for being a startup entrepreneur when there are easier ways for me to make a living.
JamesBarney 7y ago
I think that's using a very broad definition of marketing. Convincing founders to give you money, finding employees and convincing them to join you, marketing or selling to customers are very important skills. But they are fairly diverse and I don't think there is a lot of overlap in the skill sets. Even just something like "market to customers" can require very different skills depending on your budget, target customer, market segment and could involve such diverse skills branding, networking, inside sales, outside sales. I think you're right they're very important but I think devs tend to way overestimate the overlap and underestimate how deep and diverse the knowledge bases are.

by harryh 7y ago

brenden2 7y ago

Congrats, it sounds like you have everything figured out. I wish you the best.

tptacek 7y ago
I don't know if it's helpful or not for you to hear this, but as another serial startup person, I strongly second what he's saying. And marketing is a learnable skill, not a personality trait. It can even be engineered! It's also how you acquire social capital, and a "brand". Another way to think about it is: by writing comments like the one you wrote above, about the unfairness of it all, you're already marketing. You're just doing it badly. I don't want to sound like I'm picking on you, because this is an incredibly prevalent handicap among smart tech people.
- brenden2 7y ago
  I appreciate you taking the time to try and be helpful. Perhaps I'm just not cut out for being a startup entrepreneur when there are easier ways for me to make a living.

JamesBarney 7y ago

I think that's using a very broad definition of marketing. Convincing founders to give you money, finding employees and convincing them to join you, marketing or selling to customers are very important skills. But they are fairly diverse and I don't think there is a lot of overlap in the skill sets. Even just something like "market to customers" can require very different skills depending on your budget, target customer, market segment and could involve such diverse skills branding, networking, inside sales, outside sales. I think you're right they're very important but I think devs tend to way overestimate the overlap and underestimate how deep and diverse the knowledge bases are.