Grinberg: Believing a good product sells itself is delusional
Matan Grinberg · OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 13, 2026 · at 25:13
Matan Grinberg, founder and CEO of AI startup Factory, discusses why Silicon Valley tech companies underestimate the importance of sales and marketing relative to software engineering.
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“There's a very common Silicon Valley fallacy, which is there's like research is like the pinnacle. And then there's engineers who implement the research, you know, they're not quite there, but you know, they're still great. And then there's sales and marketing and all that dirty stuff. Oh, if only we could build a better product and it would sell itself and we wouldn't need to deal with, you know, sales and marketing. And it's just completely delusional. Like, the product at factory is the entire journey from the very first time they hear our name, till their 10th renewal after a decade of being a happy customer.”
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