[RestlessMind]

> by providing a non-essential service like salesmen...

Sorry to break this to you but if you think Sales is non-essential, you don't know anything about startups.

[martin-t]

You didn't understand what I wrote.

Of course you need to sell your product but as a builder you can do it yourself. It's not your specialty so you likely will be worse at it than a dedicated person and will have less time for actual building.

The key is that builders can exist without salesmen. But salesmen without builders have nothing to sell.

[petralithic]

In civilizations, people used to primarily be farmers but as food production increased, this gave rise to the specialization or division of labor. In the nature of an evolutionary competition of companies, those that specialize into builders and sellers will do better than builders that try to do both, therefore the former paradigm will win out.

[RestlessMind]

> but as a builder you can do it yourself

One who can both build and sell is indeed a rare specimen (unicorn?). I know many builders and less than 10% of them can sell.