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Comment by gridspy | Hacker News Reader

Paul Graham made is essays for free. As a result he has a loyal following of hackers. Long after his essays were popular, he started tapping into that following with YC.

Joel Spolsky had a popular programming blog. He mentions a site that he is involved with (SO) and suddenly it has the attention of a large number of people.

We all know Andrew Warner, what a nice guy is his, how good he is at building relationships. We visit his page often.

Don't you think that this alone is an extremely valuable commodity?

If Andrew decided to start a venture, or to invest and promote a venture, he would have the eyes and ears of the HN community in short order.

That is worth far more than any paywall revenue.

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Paul Graham certainly didn't give Viaweb to Yahoo for free.

Joel Spolsky sells software for a living and is looking to turn a profit with StackExchange soon.

Why should people be criticized, on a site specifically built to attract entrepreneurs, for trying to turn a profit with their venture? How hypocritical.

It maybe true that some of these comments sound hypocritical but I feel that you are comparing apples and oranges with your comparison. Joel Spolsky spent a lot of time/energy on his Joel on Software blog and from his user base there "spun off" a business. Joel might have never spent on marketing for Fog Creek but he sure spent a lot of time on his blog that functioned as marketing for his business. His blog was not his business, he didn't wrap a subscription model to it. The same is true with Paul Graham, he built a following with his essays which "spun off" a book and a following to his other ventures.

This is exactly my point. The free content becomes a personal marketing vehicle - usually an extremely valuable one. You don't have to charge directly for the content to unlock this value.

My blog http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/ is never going to turn a profit. Hopefully it does attract more eyes to my other ventures, such as http://gridspy.co.nz/

This logic is poor. It's not the same because Mixergy IS his startup. It's not a promotional vehicle. What you're saying is that content (video, writing, etc.) can't be a startup but can only be used to promote something else.

There's no reason it couldn't be used either way.

That is not what I am saying.

What I am saying is that if you create free, popular, useful content you can't help but make money from the word of mouth it generates.

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