Awesome interview guys. I personally love Themeforest and spend hours (literally) skimming through themes a few times a month. I'm sure some are coded better than others and we all want a well coded product, but as someone who is not a true developer/programmer, I appreciate when a theme has a lot of options built in because for me (and novice users) it's a lot easier to just not use a feature that I may not need, than have to somehow add one that I do need and make it work right.

Like you said, for the client (and many users), it's all about what looks good. They could care less if the theme is bloated with shortcodes and CPT's, and frankly the people buying themes on Themeforest aren't developers anyway. It's the entire reason why they chose Wordpress in the first place. I think a lot of theme shops forget that.

I may be the exception, but when I look around at some of the big "players" in the theme space, I think many of their themes leave much to be desired, and they are priced in the same price point as some of the themes on Themeforest that obviously took much longer to develop.

I would almost rather give my money to an author on Themeforest then to a "corporate" shop that is pumping out 12 themes per year that all have the same structure but with slightly different colors/CSS.

Just my $0.02. Great stuff though and props to Jonathan. I bought Genesis Church theme from him last year and it's awesome and my client loves it.