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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

> I work mostly on what I want to work on, take a day off whenever I feel like it, and optimize the business for quality of life rather than for any particular growth or financial targets.

There was some thread here where patio11 kind of snickered when someone called his business a "huge success"; probably because he knows a bunch of people that earn one or more magnitudes more money. But the above quote probably sums up "fantastic success" for me, and I think, a whole lot of the world.

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Sure, but then "fantastic success" can be relative to cost of living, too. You can earn an order of magnitude less and still be experiencing "fantastic success" if you happen to live in e.g. Cambodia.

Given that he lives in Tokyo, which has one of the highest costs of living on the planet, I guess that's an important point as to HOW fantastic his success has been :)

I think he's mentioned Nagoya pref, which is kinda countrysideish and less expensive to live in. (and also houses can be of better build.)

He moved to Tokyo earlier this year. This is mentioned in his post. For example:

"Appointment Reminder’s key stat of interest is monthly recurring revenue on our publicly available plans, since this is the most predictable revenue in any of our businesses and thus lets me make consequential decisions like “Move the family to Tokyo, where rents are 5X what they were in Ogaki” (that happened, more later” or “Bring on help” (that also happened, more later)."

Ah, ok, thanks for the correction.

He mentions in this post his family moved to tokyo. I guess the downvotes were from those to lazy to mention this?

Aichi Prefecture.

He's moved to Nakameguro earlier this year.

Tokyo is not as expensive as many people think.

For the most part, I hear you on that. However, if you start a biz that when fully optimized can gross $10MM or $100MM a year, but because one is focused on Q of L issues, that biz only grosses $1MM a year, I think that's selfish behavior and obviously detrimental to one's employees and/or shareholders.

Of course, the downvote. Any critique, no matter how thoughtful or balanced, of any of the HN sacred cows (patio11 in this case) will guarantee you downvotes.

Tyranny of the majority is in effect at HN.

Whining about downvotes earned you some more.

To respond to your original comment, you're right if you have external shareholders. If you don't, it's pretty much up to you. Your employees aren't owed a maximum possible amount of growth either. It's a free market - they can stay or leave.

Fair enough, but in all seriousness it really should be a site requirement for either the downvoter to identify themselves, or post a note as to why they are downvoting. The process is just too opaque.

I share your disdain for cowardly down voters.

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