Lately, I keep hearing roughly the same story from developers who launch their own products: "I thought the hardest part would be building it. Turns out it's marketing." For someone who has worked in marketing for more than ten years, there's a certain irony in that.

Early in my career, developers often looked down on marketing. The attitude went something like this: we build the product, write the code, solve complex technical problems. And marketing? Copy, ads, pretty pictures?

I've already unpacked some of these observations on my blog , but here I want to take a broader view. Today, the situation is changing: development is gradually becoming more accessible, while marketing is becoming harder. And developers who want to build their own products will have to accept that.

Development Is Getting Easier. Marketing Isn't

An important caveat here. Individual marketing tasks have also become much simpler.…