Steve Jobs: When salespeople run tech giants it's over

Groupon is a classic example: they have over 1,600 salespeople in the company. This number represents 75% of the total Groupon staff (http://www.centernetworks.com/groupon-roundup) I don't think they are particularly innovative. Low barriers of entry. It's just about how fast you can scale and yet it made it to the IPO stage. Few startups ever get to see that. Thus (with all do respect) I disagree with Jobs that a tech startup run by a salesman is doomed (although some might argue groupon is not really considered "techy"). I think a startup needs a good mix of a hacker, a hustler and a designer. Jobs was all 3 and that's what made Apple work.

This sounds a lot like Oracle and Rackspace. (My understanding is that of Rackspace's 3,700 employees, 2,500 are sales reps and only 500 of them are engineers. The rest serve in various administrative roles.)