1) The 'great' marketing, pr, bd people make way way more money than 'great' tech people. It's unlikely that a startup can afford a killer marketing guy at $300k. They're probably hiring marketing people at $50k.
2) It appears you don't value those positions much. If you are the one doing the recruiting, I would say that explains it.
3) Marketing, PR, and BD make a lot more sense in industries where tech isn't the dominant factor. Just look at consumer packaged goods, movies, etc. Almost no tech worth talking about in CPG, but some amazing marketing and biz dev people. Those industries (and others) attract the best business people because they have a lot of impact on the success or failure of the product. In startups, if the developers suck there really is nothing the marketing guy can do about it.
3) Marketing, PR, and BD make a lot more sense in industries where tech isn't the dominant factor.
I won't disagree, but I'd be wary of overstating the importance of that point. Marketing definitely matters for technology (esp. when you take a broad, holistic view of what 'marketing' is). There are more than a few stories in the annals of the tech industry where a nominally superior tech lost out to an inferior product that had better marketing around it.
On that note, the book In Search of Stupidity[1] catalogs a pile of tech marketing disasters from over the years. I'd recommend it to anyone who thinks "marketing isn't that important" or anything along those lines.
In startups, if the developers suck there really is nothing the marketing guy can do about it.
That's assuming the consumer is tech-savvy and actually cares. I'm guessing AOL didn't have the best developers, features, etc., but they definitely had the best marketers.
Anti-virus companies also thrive due to PR and marketing, ranging from contacting news outlets about the Michelangelo virus, to scaring people with an animated gif reporting that your computer is infected. With the latter, the scammers made billions off of software that did nothing at all--that's the power of marketing.
2) It appears you don't value those positions much. If you are the one doing the recruiting, I would say that explains it.
3) Marketing, PR, and BD make a lot more sense in industries where tech isn't the dominant factor. Just look at consumer packaged goods, movies, etc. Almost no tech worth talking about in CPG, but some amazing marketing and biz dev people. Those industries (and others) attract the best business people because they have a lot of impact on the success or failure of the product. In startups, if the developers suck there really is nothing the marketing guy can do about it.