Since I would have sympathized with this viewpoint earlier in life, I’ll give you the just-the-facts version: He took an offline business in a regulated indust

Since I would have sympathized with this viewpoint earlier in life, I’ll give you the just-the-facts version: He took an offline business in a regulated industry (wine) which he inherited and ~20Xed it online, got Internet famous, built one of those social media marketing companies which has fairly little lasting impact but (like Madison Avenue) has a metric truckload of money run through it, got deal flow, invested, etc. At least one thing he's done is worth watching for many HNers: someone said "It's easy to make money when you have connections but I don't have connections so boo hoo" and he said "Watch me. Suppose for the sake of argument that I own a beer blog, instead of the blog I actually own. My new name is Steve. I Google beer accessories and see this company is advertising on AdWords, so I know they have an advertising budget. I will now cold call them live, as Steve who runs a blog no one has heard of which doesn't exist, and sell them ads on my beer blog." He then does. Edit: Found the video. In the intervening years I had misremembered some of the details. Very little of what I watched in 2008 I still quote in 2018; I think I will probably be able to quote this video with that level of detail in 20X8, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG7WFxT1ySY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG7WFxT1ySY