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Comment by idoby | Hacker News Reader

Article quotes Thiel out of context, exactly reversing his intended meaning (this is the cost of saying unpopular things, I guess).

“If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough” and “Technology is primarily about product development, not distribution" appear in Zero to One as the wrong lessons from the dotcom crash. Thiel is saying this to establish what he doesn't believe. In fact, that entire chapter is dedicated to convincing techies that sales and advertising do matter.

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Author here.

That was my fault. Thank you for pointing out the mistake. Im working on it :)

I enjoyed the article otherwise. Keep up the good work!

Thank you!

Indeed, on the book he says that engineers tend to underrate the importance of the “marketing people”, and that a good product alone won’t sell itself.

Same thing happened with quoting Marc Andreessen. >You just have to be able to show that now is the time.

The right time often refers to available technology. Andreessen often reference Newton and iPhone to convey what he means by “the right timing”

Both are true. To have a huge success you need a great product that "sells itself" and you need sales and marketing to sell it.

Having just a great product will get you so far, but won't break through into the big leagues. Having only sales and marketing but a shit product will get you a flash in the pan.

I wasn't commenting on whether Thiel or Andreessen are right or wrong, I'm just saying the article misrepresents Thiel's view as they appear in Zero to One.

Also not sure if Thiel has changed his mind since then. Judging by recent interviews (e.g. with Eric Weinstein), he hasn't.

Yes Thiel writes how sales is important.

He gives out a mental model to think how much sales is important for your company, and how much you should invest in it. On a scale from tiktok (viral) to Palantir, you have to increase your sales spendings.

He talks how advertising was important for PayPal (by giving some money(sales spending) for referring).

And he talks why small/medium sized businesses don't use softwares for day-to-day tasks. Because they lie (in his words) a dead zone of sales, the 1000$ per product.

I think of sales & marketing as two sides of the same coin, but the tactics change based on your deal size.

Coca-Cola have a field sales team, selling into convenience stores and gas stations and making sure the shelves are full, but that's dwarfed by their enormous marketing budget. It doesn't make sense to have someone making cold calls or doing door to door sales for a $2 bottle of coke.

Oracle has a marketing team, and they sponsor certain things to get visibility in the public eye, but almost all of their spend goes into a large team of salespeople. No Facebook ad, or coupon in the mailbox is going to convince a CIO to spend $5m on a new database solution.

> Both are true.

Precisely. It seems rather vacuous to claim something as more necessary than something else. Either something is or is not a necessity.

> It seems rather vacuous to claim something as more necessary than something else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Read that page a moment and I think you might realize degrees of need isn't such a vacuous idea.

That is not a measure of needs. In other words, needs are not being measured against an objective (numerical) metric.

That is a proposal for a dependency graph of needs. It is explicit in the name: hierarchy.

So no, that theory is not measuring a degree of needs.

Your argument has so many negations that it's impossible to follow.

Article quotes Thiel out of context (NEGATION), exactly reversing (NEGATION) his intended meaning (this is the cost of saying unpopular (NEGATION) things, I guess). “If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough (NEGATION)” and “Technology is primarily about product development, not distribution (NEGATION)" appear in Zero to One as the wrong (NEGATION) lessons from the dotcom crash. Thiel is saying this to establish what he doesn't (NEGATION) believe. In fact, that entire chapter is dedicated to convincing techies that sales and advertising do matter (implied NEGATION).

With all due respect, and maybe it's a lack of coffee, but I haven't got a clue what you're trying to say.

Try the coffee

Interesting observation! FWIW I read the original poster's comment and understood it very easily and felt the negations flowed fairly naturally in their sentence. Good observation nonetheless!

Good point.

I think it was lack of coffee for me too, I guess (and please allow me to hide behind English, as it isn't my first language). Also, some of those negations are part of the original quotes, it would feel wrong to edit them, for me.

I'd edit the original comment but it feels wrong now that there are child comments.

I'll try to do better in the future.

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