My point is that those companies they built such a hype around their “storytelling” and not their product.

Smart marketing…

My verb: “Is not what you you sell but how you sell it”.

But I think calling it BS'ing is indicative of how most product people look
at marketing and it's a dangerous attitude. Think about the last time you
recommended a doctor to someone. Was it because he did a great job healing
you? Probably not. It was because of *how they made you feel*. Products
are the same way– building great products is only half of the game.
(analogy hat tip to Seth Godin)

That's the whole story…

All the companies Tony mentioned have no spectacular products, but the storytelling (bs..ing) is GREAT !!!

My point is that those companies they built such a hype around their “storytelling” and not their product.

Smart marketing…

My verb: “Is not what you you sell but how you sell it”.

But I think calling it BS'ing is indicative of how most product people look
at marketing and it's a dangerous attitude. Think about the last time you
recommended a doctor to someone. Was it because he did a great job healing
you? Probably not. It was because of *how they made you feel*. Products
are the same way– building great products is only half of the game.
(analogy hat tip to Seth Godin)

That's the whole story…

All the companies Tony mentioned have no spectacular products, but the storytelling (bs..ing) is GREAT !!!

How's this for a story: Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone 134 years ago TODAY, when a horse and carriage was how you drove to work. Still, most people use 134 year old technology to answer their business phones. Time to upgrade. — Still not riveting, but a nerdy discovery I made today.

Yeah, I think there are implications for YC. While I would heartily
recommend YC to everyone, I think the weakest spot was with educating
founders on the costs and methods of customer acquisition. This is a
non-issue for companies that really nail word-of-mouth and PR (we did pretty
good here, thankfully) as well as companies that are viral / SEO-powered.

But the majority of YC companies find that they made something people want,
but not necessarily something that they shout about from the rooftops. Even
with good word of mouth, you quickly hit the “how the hell do we scale
customer/user acquisition” problem. Certainly many YC founders are
ill-equipped (In terms of skills or mindset) to do sales.

I think YC is doing some internal “conferences” that are going to help here.
There was just an SEO-focused one (with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz as a
panelist, among others) and there might be a freemium/sales one in the
future.

This was my first real product startup (my last was a quick sale and my
first was a services company). My next one will almost certainly never
leave the starting blocks unless I think I have a clever solution to
customer acquisition baked into the idea. SEO and viral strategies work a
lot better this way versus trying to “staple” 'em on after the fact.