First you have the product people. They make the product that people like and build a strong company off of a good product.
After the product people you have the marketing people come in. They don’t really know how to evolve the product, but they know how to sell it and generally they know not to mess with a good product and the company makes a lot of money and grow to the logical maximum of whatever product or services they offer.
Eventually the marketing people reach the limit and then the finance people come in. And this is when a company fully gets gutted. To the bean counters every thing is a bean. They look at the good successful product and think, “how can we make this cost less to make.” So they cut every corner they can to make numbers go up on a spreadsheet. At first this is okay, because it is just a few changes that aren’t that big of a deal, but 30 change later and customers notice and are irate and swear off the company forever.
Not satisfied they will usually cut internal costs too and all of the good employee will leave.
The company then sometimes brings back in a product person and rebounds or sells off to private equity.
After the product people you have the marketing people come in. They don’t really know how to evolve the product, but they know how to sell it and generally they know not to mess with a good product and the company makes a lot of money and grow to the logical maximum of whatever product or services they offer.
Eventually the marketing people reach the limit and then the finance people come in. And this is when a company fully gets gutted. To the bean counters every thing is a bean. They look at the good successful product and think, “how can we make this cost less to make.” So they cut every corner they can to make numbers go up on a spreadsheet. At first this is okay, because it is just a few changes that aren’t that big of a deal, but 30 change later and customers notice and are irate and swear off the company forever.
Not satisfied they will usually cut internal costs too and all of the good employee will leave.
The company then sometimes brings back in a product person and rebounds or sells off to private equity.