Does your product tell the story?
Product vs Marketing: who wins
When I was a VC, I used to have theoretical arguments with other VCs about what matters most → great product or great marketing & sales. I used to think that great marketing can overcome anything, even a product that isn’t quite right.
I had portfolio companies with stellar teams, and I was disappointed when they didn’t push the pedal on marketing or sales. I argued with co-investors, making the case that awesome partnership deals take time to put together, so kickstarting the effort early was essential, even before the product was ready for primetime.
The counterargument was, in the world of software, the product is your “funnel.” The problem with great marketing is that it will hide the leaks in that funnel, fooling you into believing the hype around your vanity metrics.
Once the marketing hype fades away, this broken funnel comes to light, creating even more problems since lots of capital and important customer impressions have already washed through it.
To me, this was indeed a decent point, but I would reply that all the activity produced by great marketing would help you move past the first funnel and provide a short-cut to the inevitable next funnel. And our arguments would go further down the rabbit hole from there.
Now, as the CEO of Bizly for the past few years, my entire perspective has changed. And I’ll admit, I was wrong. The product is indeed the cornerstone of a great software business.
And the reality is that you need marketing & sales, too. But its important to focus on what is most important. Most early-stage software startups are not (yet) in the game of creating successful long-term businesses where sales is vital. Early stage software startups are in the game of capital efficiency and experimentation: making the most of very little.
They need to prove that their experiment can make $1 + $1 = $3 on very small amounts of capital. If they do this, they will then get the real capital to start building the real business on top of the successful experiment.
Based on everything I’ve been through as an entrepreneur, my strong belief is that the capital efficiency equation can only be proven with a great product. Amazing sales and marketing can only push leads into the top of the funnel.
If the product can’t retain and convert those leads into real customer engagement, then you simply will run out of money before you can prove the equation. Maybe you can get insane lucky and Beyoncé will tell everyone about your product, sing about it in her songs, and dance with it in her videos.
Even Beyonceé won’t be able to help you without a solid core product. No matter how lucky you can get with marketing or sales, you will always need a way to survive “after Beyoncé.” There are countless software corpses, stacked on top of each other, who got their lucky marketing break, but didn’t have the foundation of a product that solved real customer pain underneath it. And they died.
The reality is that your product is a reflection of everything you’ve learned, all the micro-decisions you’ve made, and most importantly, all the listening you’ve done to the voices of your team, customers, and suppliers.
Marketing and sales can communicate those discoveries, but those clever words can never replace the hard work and tireless efforts of converting those discoveries into software. After all, you’re a software company, remember?
We’re really excited to launch the Bizly corporate platform on September 12, 2017. Its been a long journey of discovery and learning. We’ve listened to large enterprise customers, hundreds of their end users (admins and employees), hotels and restaurants around the country, our investors, and the brilliant insights of our team leaders.
We’ve never stopped listening. In fact, we added the critical component of a meeting concierge to the platform just a couple weeks ago. As a result of our commitment to listening, we’ve built a product that we are confident is the most responsive meeting platform on the planet.
Responsive to all the stakeholders involved in the meetings industry. And on September 12, we’ll make the experiment available, for free, to anyone with a corporate email address. I’m anxious, I’m excited, but deep down, I know we’ll change the world.
