I'd wager that most successful products and services are made and sold by people who are (roughly) in their own target market.
Pebble was made by a guy who wanted a Pebble. Twitter was made by a guy who wanted everybody to know when he ate a sandwich. Dropbox was made by a guy who wanted to be able to share files with his sister without a hassle.
This is also why I believe that the fediverse will never take off unless the general population starts taking privacy seriously (which someday they might, who knows!)
In fact, we didn't start doing TalkJS. We started out with a totally different kind of chat app, pivoted 4 times (!), and, suprise, only when we started shipping a product that we were in the target market for, things took off.
You're talking sales to individuals though. The typical enterprise sales rep is probably not the customer for a a manufacturing process control system or retail POS.
With some exceptions. Enterprise sales reps are sometimes hired in from industries where they've been a buyer or user of the type of product that they're selling--which helps them speak the right language and understand the pain points.
But I can guarantee that many enterprise sales reps, including good ones, have never gotten hands on in even the most cursory way with the products they sell.
Pebble was made by a guy who wanted a Pebble. Twitter was made by a guy who wanted everybody to know when he ate a sandwich. Dropbox was made by a guy who wanted to be able to share files with his sister without a hassle.
This is also why I believe that the fediverse will never take off unless the general population starts taking privacy seriously (which someday they might, who knows!)
In fact, we didn't start doing TalkJS. We started out with a totally different kind of chat app, pivoted 4 times (!), and, suprise, only when we started shipping a product that we were in the target market for, things took off.