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They prey on the "I want to be a millionaire CEO but don't have any real skills and don't know what I actually want to do with my life" crowd. Usually the messa

They prey on the "I want to be a millionaire CEO but don't have any real skills and don't know what I actually want to do with my life" crowd. Usually the message is that you can get there without doing any actual real work (kind of says all you need to know about their target audience). I wonder how many truly successful businesses actually started from that point? The "entrepreneurs" I know had business that grew organically out of fulfilling a genuine need that either they had or that they could satisfy for someone else with their skillset and knowledge. Saying they got where they are by accident is probably a bit too dismissive but I don't think any of them set out with the end goal in mind - it just happened organically. I include myself in that of course.

coldtea 8y ago
>Usually the message is that you can get there without doing any actual real work (kind of says all you need to know about their target audience). The more advanced such snake-oil salesmen have added elements of "of course you also need to put in the effort", or even directly promote "struggle-porn" [1] -- while everything else you wrote about them remains true. [1] https://medium.com/@nateliason/no-more-struggle-porn-202153a01108 https://medium.com/@nateliason/no-more-struggle-porn-202153a...
- rv-de 8y ago
  Interesting article. There was a discussion of it recently on here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269846.