Have you looked at Steve Blank's Customer Development stuff that has been making the rounds here? Blank formalized a process for developing customers that has t

Have you looked at Steve Blank's Customer Development stuff that has been making the rounds here? Blank formalized a process for developing customers that has the same impact that formalizing software development process has on software development (reduces risk). Using his process, the technical team will have their hands full and will need someone out on the field talking to people right in the beginning. It clarifies the role of early stage marketing/sales/etc. in relation to early stage product development. My partner and I have been working on both product and customer development using Blank's process, and I can tell you it takes as much brain-effort on the customer development side as it is on the technical side. Someone skilled with customer development process will be as highly valued as the crack founding technical team. At the very least, you would be able to find out how to sell yourself better for startups. If you want to find out more, check out the blog posts here: http://steveblank.com/category/supermac/ http://steveblank.com/category/supermac/ ... and definitely get his book.