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Comment by cal85 | Hacker News Reader

I think the main battle is mindset. The willingness to be seen attempting to persuade others to buy your product or invest in you or whatever. A lot of people, including engineer types, have a deep aversion to this, which may remain unexamined even after they’ve consciously recognised they need to ‘learn marketing and sales’.

I suspect success in this area might be only 20% about learning practical methodology. The other 80% would be some kind of self-examination, then analysing and resolving whatever aversions you discover - or deciding on a different strategy such as teaming up with someone who is already comfortable with marketing/selling.

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I can agree with the self-examination as a major issue, speaking as a technical person trying to learn sales. I think the thing that attracts a lot of people to CS and tech is the idea of a right answer and that we don't have to socially appeal to anyone to be correct. You do the hard work and you get the right answer, the right number, the correct math proof, the code runs and the tests verify it, etc. It either works or it doesn't and you know when you're done.

This attitude has served me poorly working inside of larger tech companies because I focused too much on doing excellent work and not enough time advertising my work to others, partially out of a revulsion towards being perceived as the type who self-advertises bad work to non-technical decision makers. It's the "build it and they will come" mindset and it's a hard thing to break.

I wonder if "build it and they will come" is just flat out wrong, or only correct for certain products? Is there anything one can "just build" now and expect some market adoption?

    1. build something noone can live without.
    2. it already exists : market is too competitive

You have to build something that doesn't exist and which would be still considered as almost vital.

I’m guilty of this. Having recognized the need to market my product, I’m trying to go about it in the most honest way possible and one that is in line with my values. Before this, I had the opinion of my work will speak for itself, but now I’m trying to at least raise awareness about my work.

Most people are held back by their conscience

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