"A startup company is like a bicycle", said one VC to me. "The two wheels are marketing and engineering and you don't get very far without both"

The first think I thought when I saw this quote was that there's a wall full of unicycles at the YCombinator/AnyBots office, and lots of people that ride them effectively.

"A startup is like a bicycle." I think only a business person would come up with such an analogy. Remember, it implies there is somebody else sitting in the seat.<p>And the VC is riding you? Certainly not your customers, in the early stage, since you may not have any. And each of the founders we know is already a bicycle wheel, not the rider. Must be the VC, right? Remember, business people and large software companies see programmers as cogs or wheels, important only as part of a system. If you play along with their analogies, you are just asking for trouble.<p>How about a different analogy, which favors us, the software guys? A startup is like... Fill in your own reply.<p>

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:<p>"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center." - Peter Drucker

Google?