I think that what drino is bringign to the table (this is pure speculation based on the original post) is knowledge of the domain, and persistence. If she is good at selling the solution then I think she has a good chance of succeeding.

An overall note on your post: I think that when you break it all down there are basically only two things that matter in a startup: 1) having a product. 2) being able to sell it. Often the people that are good at making products are terrible at selling them and vice versa. So you certainly need good hackers, but you also need great salesmen. And both of them need to be pretty persistent, since they're facing tough jobs.