Not to mention that it's a common misconception in technology that a company creates value by shipping increasing complexity to the customer. I.e. "this is what we have built, this is how we know how to extend it with more features, now let's figure out how to sell that."

Starting with an idea and trying to market it is the opposite of what to do. Instead, figure out what problems your potential customers have (by talking to them!) and then set about solving those problems with as little technology and ceremony as possible.

Once you're done with that, your potential customers are practically already lined up, because they were the ones who ordered your solution in the first place.

Edit: The key thing is that in the initial exploration of the problem space, you are not selling anything. Those discussions are all about the potential customer. You have to put yourself into their minds and view yourself from the outside.

They will be really insecure. Both because they are not ready to buy something any time soon, and because they don't want to reveal sensitive information to an arbitrary third party.

You know that you care about them and their business deeply, so it's easy for you to assume that everything you say comes from a good place. They don't know that yet – and worse, they're used to awful salespeople that just want to trick them into buying more complexity – so they will interpret everything you say in the most dismissive way possible. You have to show that you're different and that you're not in it to sell stuff, but that you have a genuine interest in understanding their business, in which they are the expert.

This is seriously hard but something that can be practised.

> You have to show that you're different

what if you prove that you're different by making your sales model different - i.e., you create a solution for a problem of theirs (and hand-hold the implementation and deployment etc), and if/when said solution is shown to have value, then you get paid?

That sounds like an interesting experiment I would not want to be the one who makes. One of the issues I can picture with that approach is the extremely late feedback you'd get, when your customer has no skin in the game.

Funnily, the reverse is not true:

You can write the worst code, build the worst apps, and design the most terrible UX, but if you can market your business and sell to people you can still make money.

Did you mean "IS true"? Because that is certainly true.

Yes Marketing is the main challenge as you say, not technology ( for us ). Searching LinkedIn is our only bet which is difficult. Also we think posting google ads won't be of much use. Am I mistaken?

Dont limit yourself to one avenue, expand your horizon. Find platforms catered towards teams like your own. Putting all your eggs in one basket is never good. When you drop that one basket all your eggs are ruined.

> You can write the best code, build the best apps, and design the most amazing UX, but if you can't market your business and sell to people you won't make any money.

This reminds me of a comment I read here: "It's why Google salespeople make more money than Google engineers."

In short: you want to hire someone who does marketing and networking.

That is an option, but that person could walk away at any moment and you'd be left with no one in the business who has relationships with the companies or people that you build things for. That represents a high level of risk. Ideally you need someone at a founder level who will maintain those relationships. For most tech startups that means one or more of the technical people is going to have to take a step back from technical work and move more in to marketing and networking.

When I hear founders talk about starting companies so they can "give up the 9-5 grind" and "spend more time coding and less time in 'pointless' meetings" I hear alarm bells. Someone in the business has to actively enjoy meeting customers and discussing what they need for any tech company to succeed.