https://www.wired.com/story/tech-marketing-losing-its-cool/

The year 2015 was a heady time to do marketing for tech startups. The venture baronry that controlled the fates of founders had decided that markets, rather than engineering or personnel, made or broke new companies. If you were a strategist or a creative, swagger came with the job, along with corporate Uber and free lunches of glistening sushi. You’d enter a pitch meeting in your sharp blowout and bravura nail art—every time; it was all about the rose gold accent nail that year—extremely confident that a solid creed preceded you. The only thing startups need is markets.

Marketing was on fleek, just as “on fleek” was on fleek. Those were the days. I was the editorial director of a tech marketing shop based in San Francisco, and—having come up as a blowout-deprived journalist—I felt almost high on the luxe marketing-chick lifestyle. Not only did the job often seem like one long perk, but it was important. I knew, almost by heart, “The Only Thing That Matters,” the 2007 essay by Marc Andreessen, in which the oracle of Menlo Park argued that markets are, indeed, “the most important factor in a startup’s success or failure.”