It's also useful to remember that until you have an actual product, the company really does not need a sales person, because there is nothing to sell. A startup does need a lot of things besides a developer, like customer development. But customer development is not the same as straight sales! I have seen some teams flame out because there's a sales person there with nothing to sell feeling useless, and the rest of the team feeling like they are dead weight, and meanwhile real priorities aren't getting dealt with.
> But customer development is not the same as straight sales!
The point of the article, what caused my last failure, what almost everyone that bootstraps a business, and most of the ones that received investiment will tell you is that this phrase is wrong. At least in the context of growing companies (not mature companies in mature markets), if you separate the two concepts, you are dead.
And that means your sales force should never do just straight sales, and you must hire accordingly.
The worst part, I knew (at least in theory) it from the beginning. Not talking to customers is very attractive to developers. But don't mind, it didn't hurt much.
