[marioluigi]

I believe that it truly is a problem - specifically with respect to scalable marketing and especially if the founders are engineers with a great dislike of anything marketing related (yours truly included).

We like to believe that once we launch and get a handful of users, the viral effect will take place and bada-bing bada-boom we will have a million users. Movies like social network make it look like Facebook reached its first million users drinking and coding 24/7 (I still love that movie) - but the truth is that you have to put the effort in building relationships with your users and there is no scalable way to do that.

[normloman]

I can relate. Building the website is fun. Promoting it takes a massive effort, and can make you feel like a sleazy door-to-door salesperson.

I feel the same way applying for jobs.

[dshanahan]

Fortunately there are those of us who love that part:) (minus the sleazy stuff)