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I think one of the most challenging things is working on the sales side of a start-up. As an engineer, coding is relatively straight forward, but sales is a different animal.

When working on sales, I think engineers underestimate how truly difficult it is for someone to sign-up, or take their wallet out to pay for a service. The assumption of creating a great product isn't enough for success.

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Enterprise sales also takes ages. Even if a manager likes your product, and their boss, and their boss it can take another couple of steps (months) until somebody fills out a purchase order. And if you're unlucky you chase them to pay your bill. Not a small company, but major (publicly traded) companies with huge profits. So frustrating.

Ill have to agree totally here.

Having build a great SAS that is far superior than anything out there, trying to convince people to use it and keep on using it is extremely hard ! Making people pay for something is much harder than any piece of code that i wrote.

Unfortunately a great product isnt enough, that is why mediocre products with a great sales team success.

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