alt Hacker NewsThis comment makes me think of Coke vs. Pepsi.
Historically, Pepsi won taste tests and people chose Coke. Because Pepsi is sweeter, so that first sip tastes better. But it's less satisfying—too sweet—to drink a whole can.
The sexy demos don't, in my opinion and experience, win over the engineers and leaders you need. Lil startups, maybe, and engineers that love the flavor of the week. But for solving real, unsexy problems—that's where you'll pull in organizations.
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> Historically, Pepsi won taste tests and people chose Coke. Because Pepsi is sweeter, so that first sip tastes better. But it's less satisfying—too sweet—to drink a whole can.
As a Pepsi drinker (Though Pepsi Max/Zero), I disagree with this. That's one interpretation, the other is the one Pepsi was gesturing at - that people prefer Coke when knowing it's Coke, because of branding, but with branding removed, prefer Pepsi.
I personally drank Coke Zero for years, always being "unhappy" when a restaurant only had Pepsi, until one day I realized I was actually enjoying the Pepsi more when not thinking about it, and that the only reason I "preferred" Coke was the brand. So I know that this story can also be true, at least on n=1 examples.
> The sexy demos don't, in my opinion and experience, win over the engineers and leaders you need.
Great point, we're in talks with a company and this exact issue came up. An engineer used Codebuff over a weekend to build a demo app, but the CEO wasn't particularly interested even after he enthusiastically explained what he made. It was only when the engineer later used Codebuff to connect the demo app to their systems that the CEO saw the potential. Figuring out how to help these two stakeholders align with one another will be a key challenge for us as we grow. Thanks for the thought!