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Comment by oskarth | Hacker News Reader

In this thread: people who are jealous of patio11's consulting rates and success, so they try to be "skeptical" (i.e. gratuitously negative) and do some kind of reductio ad absurdum about how it "doesn't make any sense" (i.e. he's being fiscally irresponsibly, or lying) to sell a business when he could "just grow it" (i.e. with no mental effort, cause it's magic to them anyway, or he's lying) or "just drop it" (cause who cares about what you do or leave behind when you have $$$ right?).

Scratch all that jealousy. Grow up and be happy for his sake instead! HN is richer because of people like him. Here's my real comment on this news:

Congratulations Patrick! I'm looking forward to hearing more about Starfighter. You said a few weeks ago a couple of months ago, so you better push something soon ;)

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I think you might be conflating skepticism with jealousy. Sure, some are probably jealous, but others might be wary of the ebook pimping that was for a time, quite prevalent here on HN, and all from the same circle of folks.

If anything, I think it's preferable that the community engage in pattern matching and question where their heroes come from. It doesn't mean Patrick is a fraud, but it might mean that he's not the god everyone makes him out to be.

I will admit that when I first arrived here on HN, I too believed that his 'status' was a reflection of BCC's success. The way I saw it evolve was that the consulting discussions were only made possible by the fact that BCC was touted as a model product for bootstrapping success.

That could very well be my mistake, but judging by this discussion, it seems I was not the only one to make it.

I think this is why so many people are surprised by the low revenue numbers.

As for the sale itself...3x on a dying business is a pretty good deal if I must say so myself. Questioning the time he put into making the sale is silly. You can't put a price on peace of mind.

Looks around for ebook I've "pimped".

A lot of commenters seem to have missed the fact that BCC hasn't been Patrick's primary business for over 5 years.

He did a whole different product, after getting his consultancy off the ground, that is not Bingo Card Creator.

Not you. In fact, prior to today, I wasn't aware you and Patrick were working together. I have no issues there.

I'm not going to name names, but I'm pretty sure most of the community knows the few I am referring to. It just so happens that they've also been speaking at conferences, including Microconf and others like it.

Have you bought some of these ebooks and been unhappy with them?

That's not the point, and I think you know that.

The point is this:

1. Person A builds up a persona on HN as a guru, product person, consulting expert, etc. 2. This person then sells an e-book, leaning upon that reputation. 3. This person's uses the launch as an example of being successful. 4. The cycle repeats.

This is an obvious manifestation of the age old Mass Control, Product Launch Formula, etc, and I have no problem with that. My point above is that it's OK for people to vet the parties behind these products, and I think it's lazy to immediately dismiss criticism as jealousy.

No, I am literally having a hard time understanding why people are so automatically suspicious of ebooks. My bias on the table: writing books is so non-remunerative that making them almost seems like charity to me.

Very often the real return in writing an (e)book is personal branding. It's a pretty effective SEO technique. I don't see why this isn't obvious to you. I literally know more than a handful of people whose primary motivation for writing an ebook was that it would raise their profile. That's half the reason why so many ebooks are free, kind of similar to how and why (partly) people contribute to OSS projects without pay.

I don't think anyone thinks of Patrick as a god.

But a lot of people rightly view him very highly personally, and view his advice as very good advice.

Some people in this thread are calling it into question, and a few of us are trying to get across the fact that we've known him online for many years, lots of people around here have known him in person for many years, and the accusations that his claims are exaggerated is wrong.

Also, his advice is very good - I speak as a former consultant.

What is strangely bizarre it is generally the same crowd who is hyper-critical of MBA types who make decisions based purely on numbers in an attempt to maximize revenue/profit at the expensive of non-tangibles that while not reflected in P&L statements are nevertheless very real.

You may be right, it may be jealousy to critique such a thing when many of those critiquing likely have never: 1. taken an idea and turned it into a viable commercial product; 2. maintained a company in the black for multiple years; or 3. sold an entire company they created from scratch. Then again when one has never done any of the three of those things and they are just seeing dollars (as you say it is magic to them anyway), it is probably very difficult to understand the inherent value in the actual experience of doing any one of those things. In the single comment I saw Patio11 write in this thread, it was very clear he gained knowledge/experience taking part in this exit and moving forward I doubt he is ever going to look back and think to himself, "gee I really made a mistake by selling BCC b/c of the opportunity cost", if anything on his future exit he will probably be thinking "this is such a larger deal by orders of magnitude, yet it is going much smoother, I am glad I have been here before."

Alternatively, hn crowd is not prejudiced in evaluating anything. If bill gates, jobs, Zuckerberg can be critiqued, so can be patio11

Critiques have substance. Destructive criticism is just negativity for the sake of negativity. I do agree though, the bigger figures get their share of undeserved hate around here.

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