Can't tell if that's sarcasm or not. I've 100% seen startups lose prospects and deals because the docs weren't great.

If anyone who's selling software thinks their docs are only for users, and don't get read by prospective customers, they're missing out on customer prospects without even realizing. Many people even skip the homepage and everything else and jump straight to the docs to figure out what the product does, whom it's for, how it works, what it integrates with, and so on.

Good documentation is immensely valuable. Likely an absolute must have to be a huge ecosystem like node, rails, etc. But extensive documentation certainly can't replace being a simple, well organized and elegant tool for the job. Last I checked the Gatsby docs felt more complete than the Next.js docs. Writing this out makes me want to head over to to the Next.js repo and start contributing.

If I recall correctly that’s what Patrick Collison said about one of the reasons why Stripe grew so quick as they had such useful docs. Good, robust documentation is crucial for any software project or business.

I can totally see why. Stripe’s docs are really the best I’ve seen. Not only are the docs good but the API is very logical and well made, definitely much better than their competitors like Authorize.Net.

+1 also, well maintained/pretty docs are often a sign that the project was done without a rush.