First off, let me point out that I use both Inbound and Outbound tactics when I’m developing digital marketing strategies, and I believe that some degree of both, is essential for all businesses.

Regarding your argument that a busy person is too busy to search for articles and read them. That’s not true, almost every successful decision maker in any industry will look up things on the internet, this is proven by the amount of high level CEOs and CMOs who said exactly this on interviews. The trick here is to know where do they read and who do they trust, in terms of content. If he’s the kind of person who’s constantly on Forbes, then, that’s where you should focus your efforts on, through either guest writing or PR. If he reads only print, then go print (Inbound doesn’t have to be digital).

As for your point that Inbound doesn’t create demand, it does, maybe not as fast as outbound. Different content channels would target different segments of people based on their position in the buying cycle. A PPC specialist for example, can distribute content about how startups can scale their businesses, which would in turn get them to consider PPC when they didn’t know it existed.