This is a fair general critique of a category of advice that I try hard not to fall into. It is true that I make a fair share of my income from a starter kit, but I tried quite hard to generalize my advice and only mentioned it in passing once or twice (and the only slide that really pushed it, I acknowledged it was a shameless plug).

If you read my writing[1], it will be clear that I've been documenting my journey in a probably-too-transparent way long before I had a product that benefited from getting exposure to other developers. This talk is mostly just a distillation of that knowledge, because I have graduated from "idiot figuring it out" to "experienced person who may be able to say something useful for beginners".

Also, for the record, I hate that starter kits became one of the trendy (and sleazy) products in this space, exactly because it generates reactions like this. I wrote about this last month[2], saying "They make the whole industry look bad, and make me feel like a grifter selling Pegasus, even though I have worked my ass off on it for 5+ years and think it’s great. Maybe a corollary to this point is that I kind of don’t like marketing in my industry anymore?"

Again, I think it's a fair general critique and a correct reaction to this type of advice, and also I hope that I didn't really do what you said if you read or watch the contents of the talk.

1. https://www.coryzue.com/writing/ 2. https://www.coryzue.com/writing/dec-2024/