February 7th, 2005
The anti-marketing of SugarCRM
"Software is bought, not sold." That’s the credo of John Roberts, co-founder and CEO of open source CRM software start-up SugarCRM.
Roberts asks, "Why can’t the best product win, rather than who spends the most on marketing and sales?" He boasts about never having made a face-to-face sales call. "We have disruptive business model because our focus is on building a great product, not on marketing." His anti-marketing stance and talk about disruptive models is just a different kind of marketing and conceit. In my column on ZDNet I drill down on Roberts’ anti-marketing stance (can’t out-market salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff or hoping for the viral marketing effect?), products that sell themselves, open source versus closed source, hosted apps versus on premises…
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
