Paul GrahamVerified account

Agreed, but successfully running a product team that marries domains is its own sort of advantage. We’re doing this with mechanical and software engineering at @Bractlet. It’s harder but potentially more defensible.

Wow, never thought of it that way..

This is also an advantage of car/boat/aircraft engineering companies. You can recruit people who have a personal passion for vehicles.

cc. @patrickjwoods

And that’s why great founders are more evangelist and inspiring leaders than product managers.

There is a downside to this. You might lose a very strong champion this way and real-life external feedback. At least for early stage, decision usually is not obvious.

That's also why those companies often fail when they try to move "up the stack", i.e. towards something that's supposed to appeal to actual end users