My impression was that he was also a consultant, and that BCC was more of a demopiece than a product. His A/B testing framework abingo, for example, used BCC as

My impression was that he was also a consultant, and that BCC was more of a demopiece than a product. His A/B testing framework abingo, for example, used BCC as a concrete application of the tool. It's something you can show to potential clients that they can easily understand, successful enough that it actually got traffic and believable results, and low key enough to let sit on the back burner. This is typical of consultancies: the "typical" equation is 30 percent of a year is spent working for clients, 30 percent finding new business, and 30 percent skill building. Product building, done cleverly, does both skill building and advertise your consultancy. 37signals did the same thing and we got basecamp as a result. Anyways, the attention he gets is from writing a lot, responding to comments on HN and having useful quantified insights from an unusual engineering-marketing combo. People pay attention because he is persuasive, not because he is the next Steve Jobs.