yes, there are many skills needed to get a startup off the ground (and a whole heapin' of luck), and lumping them vaguely like "sales/marketing" doesn't help. y

yes, there are many skills needed to get a startup off the ground (and a whole heapin' of luck), and lumping them vaguely like "sales/marketing" doesn't help. you need to be able to recognize (first) potential customers, find them with leverage that far exceeds the labor input, study how/why they become customers, foresee market and other risks, distill all that into strategy and features, sell these distillations to others, including cofounders, investors, and customers, orchestrate a reasonable development plan, forecast the future reasonably, and do this over and over again.