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Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

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Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#41

Post by metamemetics »

nihilocrat wrote: post #10

After reading Zed Shaw's post yesterday about how "Long Beards" are getting marginalized by "Product Guys" I cringe when I hear bullshit like this: Ideas (and in most cases even the code itself) is worth little. It’s marketing that makes the startup. (Mind you, ideas are worth little, but the rest... yeah)

Zed rants on a Zed blog IS his marketing. When the product is server code and the consumer is other programmers, Zed posting effort-rants to HN for programmers to read is GREAT marketing. If your startup's target audience isn't other web developers then the type of marketing will vary, but it is still essential.

Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#42

Post by dasil003 »

zeemonkee wrote: post #26
jonpaul wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly right. Ideas aren't worth much. I like Siver's article on ideas as multipliers. Execution and the 'business side of things' as you stated are what matters. If Zuckerberg didn't execute like he did with Facebook, Facebook would've still have been a cute little toy project at Harvard. The idea of Facebook itself is pretty simplistic.

He was also lucky, in the right place and time, and savvy enough to exploit his luck. Plus, the value of Facebook (and other sites mentioned) is the community and mindshare. You can't just buy a Facebook clone and expect overnight success.

This attitude bugs me a lot. There is probably a path for every single person in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just "savvy enough" to take advantage of it. It seems everyone wants to diminish Zuck's success by ascribing luck to it, but let me tell you something. Zuck executed the shit out of Facebook. Did the community and mindshare just come out of thin air?

There's no good reason to believe that Zuckerberg is lucky at all. Saying he was in the right place at the right time has this tacit assumption that if he were somewhere else at the wrong time he would have tried the same thing and fell flat on his face.

It seems because Facebook is an outlier, people feel safe talking about the luck factor, but that's meaningless because we all exist with individual circumstances, and by that measure everything every one of us does is based on luck. Instead, I prefer to ascribe luck to things that the individual actually had no control over, such as winning the lottery.

Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#43

Post by jonpaul »

dasil003 wrote: post #42
zeemonkee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also lucky, in the right place and time, and savvy enough to exploit his luck. Plus, the value of Facebook (and other sites mentioned) is the community and mindshare. You can't just buy a Facebook clone and expect overnight success.

This attitude bugs me a lot. There is probably a path for every single person in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just "savvy enough" to take advantage of it. It seems everyone wants to diminish Zuck's success by ascribing luck to it, but let me tell you something. Zuck executed the shit out of Facebook. Did the community and mindshare just come out of thin air? There's no good rea…

+1. I once wrote an article on why the idea of luck pissed me off too. You succinctly described my own thoughts better than I did. Thanks for writing this.

Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#44

Post by MortenK »

Marketing is hard as hell, especially so for developers.

As with many other articles like it, the advice given is too vague. We know that we need to market our product but how? Make a landing page, and get 600 subscribers out of the blue? Just blog it all up in the twittersphere and get 1000 likes, no problem?

Anyone who has tried that without a thorough understanding of marketing, and no real budget for it, will know it doesn't work like that.

When I read these marketing articles, it feels like they are explaining how to model my abstraction layers, when I haven't even written Hello world yet.

Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#46

Post by zeemonkee »

dasil003 wrote: post #42
zeemonkee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also lucky, in the right place and time, and savvy enough to exploit his luck. Plus, the value of Facebook (and other sites mentioned) is the community and mindshare. You can't just buy a Facebook clone and expect overnight success.

This attitude bugs me a lot. There is probably a path for every single person in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just "savvy enough" to take advantage of it. It seems everyone wants to diminish Zuck's success by ascribing luck to it, but let me tell you something. Zuck executed the shit out of Facebook. Did the community and mindshare just come out of thin air? There's no good rea…

I'm not saying his success was due purely to luck, but that luck was a major factor.

Being the right place and right time is a huge part of it. He was the right age, in the right environment, when the right technology reached the right tipping point and critical mass.

I'm not disparaging Zuckerberg's ability or hard work. However many with greater ability and who have worked harder have failed because of circumstances beyond their control.

Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#47

Post by auston »

1. I think everyone here is missing the point of the article... Market now, not later.

2. There is a lot of "code above all" because we are programmers. The sad reality: All aspects of a business are valuable; the ideas, code (IP), marketing, user interface design, customer service, strategy & processes! If you want to be successful, all aspects of your business need to be properly nurtured, provided for & grown.

Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#48

Post by rue »

dasil003 wrote: post #42
zeemonkee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also lucky, in the right place and time, and savvy enough to exploit his luck. Plus, the value of Facebook (and other sites mentioned) is the community and mindshare. You can't just buy a Facebook clone and expect overnight success.

This attitude bugs me a lot. There is probably a path for every single person in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just "savvy enough" to take advantage of it. It seems everyone wants to diminish Zuck's success by ascribing luck to it, but let me tell you something. Zuck executed the shit out of Facebook. Did the community and mindshare just come out of thin air? There's no good rea…

> There is probably a path for every single person in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just "savvy enough" to take advantage of it.

Yes, there is, in the literally uncountable possible paths that the decisions of every other person on the planet (not to mention the state of the planet itself) create, there probably does exist a path to success, if not all, at least most people. Some of those paths involve crime, deceit, coercion and such but that is irrelevant.

"Luck" is you making the right choices (naturally based on your genes, psychology and the decisions that have led you to your current self), others making choices that facilitate it and the planet not blowing up in this process.

Re: Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding

#49

Post by run4yourlives »

grammaton wrote: post #8

"No, these days even technical execution is mostly trivial (with a few exceptions for apps built around unique algorithms). Far more important is marketing execution." Can someone please smack this idiot?

Why? He's pretty much correct unless you are taking the statement hyper-literally.

Few web applications are technological breakthroughs. You can find exceptions in things like Google maps and such, but for the rest of the startup scene, it is all about the execution and the marketing.

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