In retrospect, it seems like IBM (tech strategy) was always hamstrung by IBM (sales strategy). The latter being firmly in the "scale top-down" camp: big custom

In retrospect, it seems like IBM (tech strategy) was always hamstrung by IBM (sales strategy). The latter being firmly in the "scale top-down" camp: big customers are the only customers that matter. I've worked for both top-down and bottom-up marketed companies, and the latter always seem to have better products. I think it's because (a) there are so few whale customers, which hyper-specializes your product to their needs instead of getting a representative sample of the actual market's needs, (b) you can do dumb shit like limit your documentation to only customers, (c) it gives you a convenient excuse to ignore customer input ("Oh, they're not a customer that matters"), & (d) it slows you down, because your customers' upgrade processes are glacially slow, which removes pressure for you to be fast.