I agree it was indeed interesting to see the way the two ideas were tied together. To appear bigger and more professional as a company irrespective of the size, a good front end (a graphics guys capable of doing all designwork) is extremely important. It is capable of sending a completely different message as far as the standards and levels of commitment of the company are concerned.
Even with a fantastic product, if there is lack of support or buy in from the customers. a company cannot succeed.
I feel, even though the game plan looked conservative, besides hard work, his philosophy of " acting big and staying humble" made a difference in the way things turned out.

I can't argue with Brett's advice here.  His priorities in this area are very similar to Google--they both place a high importance on good front-end (having worked on Google's User Experience team, I've witnessed the importance Google places on a product's interface).  I also wanted to agree with Elena's comment about the inclusion of Brett's personal life in his presentation - I, too, initially had the same reaction of wondering why he had so many personal pictures and stories.  But I realize that when you're an entrepreneur, your work and personal life are often too intermixed to separate (such as Brett finally closing the Google deal during his wedding).

"Get a good graphics guy." I found this comment highly insightful. While we have spent much time during this lecture series thus far listening to people discuss what goes on behind the scenes, it was refreshing to hear Brett Crosby mention the importance of outward appearance. After all, much of the success of a company relies on visual advertising and visual stimulation, for example. While a good product will no doubt attract clients, customers, and consumers, a visually impressive facade can further success even more.

I think Brett is making a valuable point with his advice to "get a good graphics guy," but I wonder if he is overstating the importance. After all, it is the product that sells, not the graphic design. Good graphics will not cover up a shoddy product long-term.

What good graphics can do is avoid a negative first impression, as a customer or business partner may assume that shoddy graphics are symptomatic of other deficiencies in the product. This is valuable, of course. But compare, for example, Paul Graham's advice to "deliver [your product] as informally as possible," in order to "(a) save all the effort you would have had to expend to make them look impressive, and (b) avoid the danger of fooling yourself as well as your audience." PG went around pitching Viaweb in jeans and a t-shirt and did all right in the end. Good graphics are nice, but it seems to me that the Urchin acquisition hinged mainly on the merits of their product.

I liked the advice of get a good graphics person, and furthermore that this person should be good at both print and website.  This does seem like a good investment once a product is on the market.  However, I agree that this alone cannot cover up a poor product.  As well as I know many small businesses I've bought stuff from didn't have a website or good graphics, but if the product was there, I still bought it.  I also think any website is better than a perfect looking one, as it is frustrating as a user when products don't have websites.  Also, an easy to navigate website is better than a pretty one, as this has been another one of my frustrations in my experiences.

This is rather good advice.   I had an experience where I was impressed by someone with multiple ideas for startups.  Not only did he have ideas, he found the appropriate names that were available for the companies, and have made logos around those names.  Because of that, his ideas had a much bigger impact on my perception, and I thought the ideas were better because of the completeness of thought conveyed through the graphics design.  It's a representation of your idea and an embodiment of your company that you can't do w/o.

crucial.

It was pretty evident - given Brett Crosby's emphasis on his former company's advertisements, product promotionals, and web page designs - that Brett Crosby places quite the priority on presentation and design. It seems reasonable enough: its the easiest way to differentiate a product without actually changing the capacity/innovativeness of the product itself. Many firms seems to think that because enormous companies like Apple manage to let their design and marketing prowess lead the success of their products, they can get away with the same thing. As Brett Crosby showed us, sometimes they can, but oftentimes we have small companies sacrificing improving the functionality of their products just to wrap it all under some aesthetically pleasing sheen. This may work for big companies, but is this the right approach for most small firms?