Tech founders don’t like marketing.

1 min read

A few months ago, I had an interview with the founder of a tech start-up here in London. While not the first interview of my life, it will be remembered as one of the strangest and most revealing.

After a brief introduction about me, the founder delivered a lengthy, ceremonial speech about himself and the company he led. Suddenly, the tone, at first enthusiastic and triumphant, started to slip into something more dismissive. Eventually, we got to the role for which a friend had kindly referred me - Head of Marketing. And only at this point, he proudly announced to the ‘lucky candidate’ (i.e. me) that ‘To be honest, I don’t believe in marketing!’.

Yes, he was hiring for a marketing role while simultaneously declaring marketing, in his opinion, was a waste of time for him at that (relatively early) stage. Imagine my enthusiasm at that point. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, and, as far as I know, nobody else did either. Go figure.

But the real issue here isn’t that interview. It’s the pattern I keep seeing among tech founders. They distrust marketing because they don’t understand what it actually is. To them, marketing = ads and posts on socials. Nothing else.

What they completely ignore is that marketing starts with the product and only ends with promotion. In between, it’s about pricing, market research, positioning, and placement - all of which should be defined at the very beginning, long before you run your first campaign.

Too many forget that Apple isn’t just the logo. It’s the product and the story, seamlessly intertwined. That’s marketing. They also forget that marketing should not be optional. Even in a start-up – or especially in a start-up – marketing, along with a good product/service and a capable team, is what defines the foundations on which everything else is built.