I find that posters on this board generally overvalue the inherent merits of the core product vs other business factors.
In enterprise, trust and the relationship matters a lot, since the buyer is generally taking a big risk on you as a vendor. In smaller b2b, customers will be righfully concerned about depending on you when they can't be sure you'll be around in 2 years. These are both legitimate and important factors that are outside the scope of core product.
In consumer, even a great product will often get blown out of the water if a competitor with a worse but good enough product has a deep, deep marketing war chest. (the 'ol, "if you space has a VC backed competitor, you have no choice but to also raise money and fight a war of attrition") You probably still have the best chance in consumer by creating something with inherent virality (honestly the only way to not have a huge sales and/or marketing cost in any sort of business).
It's not even a sinister conspiracy at play or anything like that. It's just a truth that non-core value propositions are important in business, and are often even part of the true "product".
In enterprise, trust and the relationship matters a lot, since the buyer is generally taking a big risk on you as a vendor. In smaller b2b, customers will be righfully concerned about depending on you when they can't be sure you'll be around in 2 years. These are both legitimate and important factors that are outside the scope of core product.
In consumer, even a great product will often get blown out of the water if a competitor with a worse but good enough product has a deep, deep marketing war chest. (the 'ol, "if you space has a VC backed competitor, you have no choice but to also raise money and fight a war of attrition") You probably still have the best chance in consumer by creating something with inherent virality (honestly the only way to not have a huge sales and/or marketing cost in any sort of business).
It's not even a sinister conspiracy at play or anything like that. It's just a truth that non-core value propositions are important in business, and are often even part of the true "product".