David, I appreciate your defense of your friend Noah; you have some insights no one else brought to this forum. But I do think you have one thing backwards.

David, I appreciate your defense of your friend Noah; you have some insights no one else brought to this forum. But I do think you have one thing backwards. I certainly wasn’t out of my element at MicroConf; Noah may have been. This wasn’t a YCombinator dinner or a Business of Software conference -- not I think his slides would have been appropriate at either of those but I do believe Noah would fit in at those VC-funding-focused venues better than I would. This was MicroConf 2011, a conference for small, bootstrapped startups. Bootstrapping a startup is something I’ve done and succeeded at in the past. And VC-funding, with a run at an IPO, is something I’ve lived through and don’t expect to try again. However, I did both as a co-founder, not solo, and did it a number of years ago, when the software industry was very a different place. So as I ramp up my new venture, I’m doing a lot of things to educate myself. One of these was attending MicroConf where I found a conference put on by people like me for people like me. Not “like me” as in gender, “like me” as in what matters when you are starting a business on your own dime and looking for tips on how to make a go of it. Most of us have day jobs or on-going consulting companies and are trying to create product companies on the side. Ages ranged considerably but I’d guess many of the attendees had a lot more business experience than Noah’s normal audience. I now know he puts a lot of energy into helping very young entrepreneurs and college-dorm-room startups. Good for him but that wasn’t who he was talking to at MicroConf. Other presenters paid attention to the audience and what we were looking for; I'm told one second-day presenter even went back to his room and revised his presentation after he heard the questions that were asked the first day. IMO, a 'brilliant marketer' should always be paying attention both to his target audience and to his effect on them; it sure didn't seem as if, that day, Noah was doing either. As for the 'small but influential line' -- I write software for nurses, truck drivers, first responders, county extension agents, and the like. People I respect enormously but for whom the industry represented by HN is pretty incomprehensible. That line is for them, not the folks here on HN.