Maybe the HN crowd has a different view of marketing than I do. Our marketing team relies pretty heavily on getting user feedback. We'll listen to individual calls to make sure the site answers questions potential customers have. We'll run surveys and over the shoulder tests to understand intent, concerns, and confusion.
My background is in marketing, and I'm confused by this parody of a marketer who doesn't know how to gather and apply user feedback to the product and site.
From my experience, the HN crowd knows better. The author is just painting this a black-and-white issue (either you're doing completely oblivious and vague marketing, or you're doing nitty-gritty hardcore sales!). Of course, this doesn't at all reflect what companies are actually doing.
If the gist of the article is "speak more with your users," then I strongly agree with that. If it's "marketing is useless for startups," well that's simply wrong.
The thing is that all of us have different interpretations of what Sales and Marketing represent. Thus I look past those terms and look at the activity she describes instead.
When I look at what she describes, I feel that it is simply a repackaged form of customer development. But for a WSJ audience, I understand the need to frame it in familiar terms.
My background is in marketing, and I'm confused by this parody of a marketer who doesn't know how to gather and apply user feedback to the product and site.