Depends on how big the quality difference is, if it is big enough then your product will grow exponentially via word of mouth, like Google did for example. That is just simple math, if you are good enough that people want to tell others about it then it will grow.
Problem is that today most technological needs are already filled by good programs so adding significant new value to peoples lives is extremely hard, so it is very unlikely that you can make naturally growing programs today on a tiny budget.
Google initially targetted a niche (geeks and nerds like us) with no-fuss, no-ads search experience where weight of the result depended mostly on how many citations it had. They were very present at conferences related to free software, for instance (which I'd consider investment in marketing).
And this group was the one in charge of "fixing their relatives' computers", so we were all too happy to tell them about Google: this is how word-of-mouth worked for them.
The difficulty with this argument is what we mean by "quality". It's tautological to state that hierarchies select for "qualities that enable you to be higher on the hierarchy"; it's much more debatable as to the nature of those qualities (and, indeed, that the existence of the hierarchy itself doesn't change the fitness surface, so that the advantageous qualities are different to what they might have been without it). See, eg, the amount of energy antlered deer (especially males) expend on having large, healthy antlers, purely to compete with other male deer. "Having large antlers" is a "quality" that has very little adaptive value outside of the conditions created by the fact of a hierarchy itself.
Lions for example - they live in aliances. Wild boars. Quite a lot of social animals live actually in families. It is hierarchy insofar adults are raising the children, but the children leave as adults and make own families. There is not much bubbling up and down.
Also, in herd animals like sheep the hierarchy consist on basically more aggressive individual eating fist and getting what they want. But, the other members dont follow them and there is no meaning of leadership. Just that, if you are stronger and beat others, you can eat first or pick place to sleep.
> Social animals organize into hierarchies precisely because hierarchies bubble quality to the top.
They don't. In business, it can be "cheapest" or "lies the most convincingly" or "has the right connections".
Even among humans, the quality that fairy often bubbles on top is violence. You see that everywhere in the world. In Chechenia it is Kadyrov and his quality was "born to correct dad and already have proven he is ruthless when dad dies". The quality that got Adolf Hitler on top was "good speaker, able to channel fear and hate".
Those are extreme examples, but I wanted something super clear. What bubbles on top is what bubbles on top. It can occasionally be quality, but it can be host of other things too.
If you've ever watched a herd of horses, you'd know that's not true. Dominance bubbles to the top. Pushiness bubbles to the top. If the animal is also a decent leader, then great. A lot of the time it's insecure and too busy trying to maintain its position and the rest of the herd ends up harried and banged up.
Seen it in dogs too, seen it a million times in people. Those are more artificial situations though.
You are proving my point. Strength and leadership are survival qualities to wild herd animals. The hierarchy allows those qualities to rise to the top. It is the herd that collectively decides to give space to the individual with those qualities. The "alpha horse" does not "dominate" the herd; no single individual can match the strength of an entire herd. The herd gives permission for the qualities to reach top of hierarchy, because those are the qualities the herd wants to select for.
If the animals making up the hierarchy disagrees with the individual on top, they remove it from the hierarchy. Easily. That's the whole point of herds, packs, and hierarchies. Together stronger than alone.
"qualities" and "quality" are two different things. Pushiness is quality as in "property", but not "quality" as in "the degree of excellence of something." In this case, lower quality individual bubbles on top, cause other horses don't want to deal with jerks aggression.
> If the animals making up the hierarchy disagrees with the individual on top, they remove it from the hierarchy. Easily. That's the whole point of herds, packs, and hierarchies. Together stronger than alone.
You write about it as if animals were rational systems thinkers and that is just not so.
Look to every world leader. Is it apparent, agreed upon, or even reasonable to assume they’re the “quality” for their locale? No, they’re the best at marketing, or “campaigning”.
Problem is that today most technological needs are already filled by good programs so adding significant new value to peoples lives is extremely hard, so it is very unlikely that you can make naturally growing programs today on a tiny budget.