How Silicon Valley gets it wrong – by Guy Kawasaki

(Since we fixed the links in here and the message is so important (and brief), we wish to re-run this post.)

“The most important thing is that you hire people who complement you and who are better than you in certain areas.

Time and again in Silicon Valley, two engineers who are founders of the company have a very unique perspective. They believe that engineering is hard, and everything else is easy. Sales, marketing, finance, operations — all that is easy.With this perspective, they think that if they set their minds to it, they could be the best VP of any of those areas.

However, in a perfect world, someone who is a great engineer and founder would appreciate the difficulty of marketing, and hire a marketing person who is far better than he or she is. Hardly anyone has that attitude, though.”

Guy Kawasaki, founder of Alltop and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, from the New York Times, 3/21/2010

Editor’s Note: Guy’s right.  Marketing is a discipline — especially with how the world has changed. To learn just how much it has changed, read Inside the Mind of the B2B Buyer: New Paths to Purchase.

It’s best left to professionals — like Find New Customers.