I'm in a hurry and didn't read the article - but on 1, developers are far from normal consumers or businesses, consider far different things reasonable and interesting and are a totally different "sell" - much as founders themselves are far different from normal employees and simply can't be judged on the same basis. I don't think your point 1 is valid at all. (Likewise, just because you can convince a developer, doesn't make you an actual salesperson, doesn't mean you can convince a customer!)
Great sales people can sell anything to anyone. Selling the things you believe in to people that really need it is easy. Selling people mediocre products they don't need and probably can't afford, that is actually difficult.
If anything convincing a developer to take your money (assuming you have any) to write code should be orders of magnitude easier than convincing a client to give you money for something that doesn't yet exist.
Almost anyone can sell anything to anyone, if the bargaining space is unrestrained.
"Would you work for me for a billion dollars a year and six months holiday?" Lots of people are going to say yes.
But are they the people you want? Do you have those sorts of resources to throw around? What about other perks of working with you to fill in the intermediate space?
Extreme example, granted. But the point is that there are things you can't solve, at least not in an immediately relevant sense, just by throwing money at them. Getting a developer's probably relatively easy. Getting one you'd want; at a price you can afford... knowing next to nothing about the technical area of the business yourself?
That may still be easier than selling something that doesn't exist, but it's not clear that it's orders of magnitude easier.
The problem is that most non-technical people with "ideas" don't have money, don't have connections, are not amazing at sales (otherwise they would have both money and connections) and don't even know now they are going to acquire customers.
They might think they are good at sales, but if that was really the case then getting enough money to hire someone to build your prototype is not that hard. Freelancers are everywhere, you can judge them by their portfolio, and getting someone to build you a greenfield project at market rates is not really difficult.
If that were true then an inventor could have asked a great sales person to sell an engineer on the idea, and build it.
In fact, this isn't true at all, and most innovative ideas are forced to be built by the same person in whose head they are, precisely because it is not true that "great sales people can sell anything to anyone", and some of the best ideas can't be sold, but must be built instead.
This was not brought up but is relevant when a lot of discussion on this article is revolving around the business-developer relationship.
>Selling people mediocre products they don't need and probably can't afford, that is actually difficult.
This is exactly why developers (at least this one) have a pending distaste for business people. This should never, ever, be done. The difficulty of selling 'mediocre products' that are not in 'need' and to people who cannot 'afford' is awful and disgusting. It implies tricking the buyer for your own gain.
If you have a mediocre product do not misrepresent when you sell it. If you are trying to fck people out of their money, fck you.
The difficult case is what if you invest your livelihood in a product that turns out to be shitty. You are left with either tricking people in to buying it or facing the alternative -- debt, foreclosure etc.. This could include putting a family (wife or husband or partner and children out on the street). This sucks for all involved. Customers wish you had a good product, you wish you did too.
This decision comes down to responsibility. You built that product. You were in charge or you bought in to the company. Take the loss, be honest about the product (note sales is still involved just not sales that misrepresents).
To be clear, sales is great. If sales is the method of opening people's mind enough to see what you genuinely believe are the best parts of your product. If its to lie and convince them to lie and buy a product that is 'medicore' and they cannot 'afford' (implicitly that this purchase will hurt them in other ways) then fck sales. This 'lying sales' is what the statement indicated and what I, and I think other developers, do not like.
