Statistically, I'd guess that most companies fail, but I don't think engineering-first companies do any worse than marketing-first companies. Granted, it's a balancing act; you have to be able to sell, but you have to have something to sell; omitting either will end badly.
> hell, the NeXT was an engineering play that utterly failed, and they weren't even led by an engineer, many people think that guy was a marketing genius.
NeXT was led by Steve Jobs, who was, as you note, not an engineer. I'm not sure what you mean this to be an example of, but it's not really relevant to arguments about "led by engineers" companies.
NeXT didn't make a lot of money but their impact was huge.
Or, rather, it wasn’t ironic and he was talking about a company culture driven by sales rather than product broadly, and wasn’t talking about individual CEOs at all, which is how many misunderstand his statement as.
And a sales driven company culture can be created both by sales driven CEOs and engineering driven CEOs and vice versa.
Eric Schmidt for instance wouldn’t even use an Android device four years after it was introduced. Jobs made them retool the iPhone after it was introduced and before it was launched because he didn’t like how much the screen scratched in his pocket.
And paired with a phenomenal engineer cofounder.
thats_bait.gif