I have been reading a book on Toyota’s leadership style. And I noticed that it talk a lot about the commitment to great product. I then thought Apple also has the same commitment. I was talking to Jeff Judge, founder of Signal and asked him how he was able to grow his company competing with giants in his space like MailChimp, HubSpot, ConstantContact etc. And he again said that his key to success was the focus on the product.

Engineers love to hear that, but the reality is that its 50% product and 50% marketing/sales. Microsoft is a monster in many niches and their success has been mainly because of the business development expertise they have. Their products historically have been broken and frustrating for customer. But they are still a strong company (may be not, but they were for a long time.)

So effort should be put in making an awesome product that wow’s the customer, but equal  effort should be put in marketing and sales. With an awesome product, sales/marketing becomes easier, but it is still required.