Any salesman, good or bad, can sell himself to an engineer. I too learned that the hard way. Another good rule for a startup: never hire a VP from a major co

Any salesman, good or bad, can sell himself to an engineer. I too learned that the hard way. Another good rule for a startup: never hire a VP from a major corporation. They are too used to a support staff that does everything for them, writing, presentations, even thinking. As others have said,they are too far removed from performing the on-the-streets job. None of us would hire a VP of Software from IBM to write code. Same applies to sales. Big company VP's are used to intimidation and throwing their weight around, attitudesthat would probably be used against you.