By DAVID SHAYWITZ, MD (7)
The unofficial mantra of silicon valley entrepreneurs may well be fake it ‘til you make it, an approach of resilient bravado that’s led to a slew of ultimately successful tech giants – and also to frank deceptions like Theranos.
Recently, I heard from VC Marc Andreessen (on the a16z podcast, here) what must be the most forthright explanation of this approach, a sales technique Andreessen calls “evangelistic selling.”
Andreessen was responding to a question about how do you sell into businesses that aren’t intrinsically receptive to change (i.e. essentially every large established business, including those dominating healthcare).
The Evangelistic Sale
First, you can see why some view Silicon Valley denizens as merchants of hype – this is, if not explicitly what Andreessen is championing, perhaps an inevitable outcome of his approach: entrepreneurs and (other) salespeople talking up an often-fantastic vision of a yet-to-be realized future.
Andreessen also points to the example of Elon Musk and Tesla; Musk is often criticized for overselling, says Andreessen, but argues Musk had to paint a vision not only of a car you could plug in, but also a whole system of superchargers along freeways, and his vision had to be compelling enough so he could actually sell enough cars “into that vision” to afford to start installing the chargers he described, and enable the vision to become a reality (which, initially, it wasn’t). Andreessen likens it to selling the first fax, which obviously wasn’t especially useful until and unless it was adopted by others.
