Hacker News Reader

Comment by lothar | Hacker News Reader

Not to be a jerk swombat, but who are you? What are your credentials?

I want to read advice from people with real world success. You may very well be successful already, so state it. I'll buy into what you're saying a lot more.

P.S. This is not a personal attack. If it comes off that way, it's my fault and failing.

View on HN

Information about me is pretty easy to come by if you try. I'm hardly a secretive person.

http://www.google.com/search?q=daniel+tenner

http://www.google.com/search?q=swombat

You can even see videos of me giving a talk based on my experiences as a startup founder.

Whether I have "real-world success", I'll leave you to do decide. I haven't achieved all that I want to achieve, by a long shot, so I wouldn't call myself a success just yet. I quit the corporate world 4 years ago to run my own business(es), and it's not looking like I'll ever need to go back. Is that some measure of success? I'm not rich yet, if that's what you mean by success. But I'm happy with my life, and I wake up every day looking forward to doing stuff I love doing. That's a different kind of wealth.

But, you make a good point. I'll think about how I can add some kind of "about" bio-type thing somewhere on the page, without cluttering it.

I consider you a success, now that I've seen some of the projects you've worked on. I did look for that information in the about section, but should've looked under "current projects".

Instead I asked you directly.

I apologize. I look forward to learning from you.

Have you read this: http://swombat.com/about

In particular, have you checked out these:

* https://www.woobius.com/

* http://www.granttree.co.uk/

In short, did you try looking up who he is and what he does? Or did you just ask the question.

P.S. This is not a personal attack. If it comes off that way, it's my fault and failing.

Swombat is all too much of a gentleman to be snarky about it.

But I have to say that this kind of comments really rubs me the wrong way.

A persons way to success is unique not open-source.

If you want to learn something then learn from peoples mistakes. Learn from what they do wrong rather than what they do right. Don't focus on who they are but what they have to say.

See if it resonates with you, that's the clue.

Thinking that successful people somehow have better advice is simple missing the point.

Mark Suckerberg can't do a facebook again, Larry and Paige cant' do a Google again Their success is not due to some secret mystery powers but a mix of luck, hardwork, stamina, network, serendipity I could go on.

When you hear about peoples track records of being successful chances are that they have much more failure than success.

For whatever it's worth, there probably does not exist a way to say "I don't know if you are important enough to heed" without coming off like a jerk. If you want to avoid that impression, it's probably best just not to say anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com