One of the mistakes I think I made in my previous companies was not being clear enough about the coordination between marketing and product.
As a company grows, there’s often a blame game between departments. Product team thinks the product is already great, it just needs to be put in front of more people (low-key blaming subpar marketing). Meanwhile, marketing team believes the product isn’t quite there yet, and therefore without burning through a big budget, it’s hard to move the needle.
I used to be wishy-washy about this, not wanting to create any rift among teams. I was like, “we’re one team, and all functions are equally important.”
I think I have a clearer view now. Yes, all functions are important, and a company should operate as one team. But the question is which comes first.
Even in this age of “distribution is everything,” I believe the right order is product first, marketing second. Marketing can’t sell an unsellable product; marketing’s role is to sell more of what’s already highly sellable. So step one is to build a great product. At least that’s my view.