"A startup company is like a bicycle", said one VC to me. "The two wheels are marketing and engineering and you don't get very far without both"
tuxdeluxe.org
tuxdeluxe.org
And the VC is riding you? Certainly not your customers, in the early stage, since you may not have any. And each of the founders we know is already a bicycle wheel, not the rider. Must be the VC, right? Remember, business people and large software companies see programmers as cogs or wheels, important only as part of a system. If you play along with their analogies, you are just asking for trouble.
How about a different analogy, which favors us, the software guys? A startup is like... Fill in your own reply.
"A startup is like walking on your hands. A startup is like a pass/fail course. A startup is like a small boat in the open sea. A startup is like a mosquito. A startup is like a hang-glider launch.
No.
A startup is like being a mosquito trying to fly a hanglider-boat while waking on your hands and not failing school."
Can somebody top that (and throw in a marketing aspect?)
in keeping with the theme:
A startup is like being a mosquito trying to fly a hanglider-boat while waking on your hands... simultaneously trying to negotiate the wind to keep you up in the air and convince your teachers to get in your boat rather than fail you.
;-)
"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center." - Peter Drucker