Then it's a dangerous parallel when talking about startups. Easy but impressive has no moat. Probably worse than easy but boring.

Or it's impressive because the marketing and design is really good? Think Beats headphones; nothing special technically, horrible value proposition, yet you see them everywhere. Is that not a most?

If by "marketing" you mean "celebrity endorsement". Beats was founded by Dr. Dre and featured by several hip hop artists and in several music videos.

Which is not said to denigrate Beats. By all means, play to your strengths. But it's certainly not an avenue obtainable by your average startup.

Beyond that, if you're talking a startup - especially an early startup - you probably aren't at the "I'm everywhere" stage yet.

We mostly self fund our companies. Easy and impressive, for us, tends to be a death knell. 6, maybe 12 months before someone bigger with more money comes into the market. Boring and easy is OK though, because people don't really pay much attention to boring.

Showmanship and perceived difficulty often seem to matter more than actual skill in writing code, too.