With the Venture Capital high society dropping doom and gloom economic messages onto the CEOs of their portfolio companies, I wanted to help out and at least do my part to deliver some more operational substance.

Great companies and their resilience is defined by the quality of their products.

Great products make up for an endless amount of sales and marketing deficiencies, but in most cases sales and marketing spend too much time making up for lost product opportunity and becomes an endless money drain. Product definition (from a buyer’s perspective) and quality are the most important drivers for consistent business success, as Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs (both product gurus) have proven time and time again.

But when money is plentiful, yet guarded by aggressive milestones we tend to throw products over the fence early and have sales, marketing and support compensate tirelessly for its in-market deficiencies. Both startups and established companies (trust me, I’ve seen a few) make those same fundamental mistakes. The results are slow sales traction, excessive marketing expenses and runaway support costs. Not things any company can afford these days.

This morning I put together a presentation (in pdf, named TVC_building_efficiencies) that identifies some of the deficiency symptoms, emphasizes the benefits of great products to the cost model, and pulls together new ways to build amazing new products. Thus creating a more resilient company, no matter what the economic conditions.

So, to directly affect company efficiency, keep a close eye on the definition and implementation of the product, its macro-economic impact and how it grows and where it bleeds.

Update: more on building efficiencies.

Tags: Performance, Consumer, Disruption, Free-market, Growth, Marketing, Markets, Quality, Resilience, Software, VC, Macro-economics