> are there people that don't think gross margins matter?

I hope not. If you sell it for less than it costs you to make it, eventually you're gonna have a bad time.

The pertinent question would be: why would you exclude sales and marketing from the gross margin, but include support costs. Ostensibly you are able to scale back sales and marketing without alienating your existing customers, but realistically optimizing for GM then potentially leads to an organization that oversells (high sales and marketing costs) and underdelivers (low value of what's actually in the product)

Employees (as long as it isn't negative and their job isn't at risk). Customers. Anyone who doesn't own stock.

Kinda a click bait title, commenter above said they should add "for SaaS companies"