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Interestingly, does anyone remember lionhearted's posts from so long ago, where he pondered over the question why patio11 makes so little money, and why he char

by pen2l 11y ago

Interestingly, does anyone remember lionhearted's posts from so long ago, where he pondered over the question why patio11 makes so little money, and why he charges so little? And the community reacted very fiercely, saying that he should let patio11 be -- he's doing his thing, money doesn't matter. And now patio11 is the posterboy for "charge more". How things change! It's kind of fascinating. Here's the HN discussion link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244 And here's Sebastian's original post: http://sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-patrick-mckenzie http://sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-patri...

derefr 11y ago
> And now patio11 is the posterboy for "charge more" I'd say that, if Patrick had believed in charging more from the start, he wouldn't be nearly as outspoken about it now. It is presumably (close to) the #1 thing he wishes he could tell younger-Patrick—but, since he can't, he's telling everyone else who'll listen. Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder what Patrick would have to say to the HN community at the time, the one who stood up to defend his undervaluation-of-self? I mean, maybe they'd have defended him no matter what side of the coin he was on, given that he's a pretty central member of the HN "tribe"—but I'd be interested in a corollary post to the "charge more" posts that goes more like "don't praise people for charging less."
- zkhalique 11y ago
  so patio11, was lionhearted an influence on you?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I have talked to Patrick at what I think he & I & Erin would agree is excruciating length on this subject and that name has never come up in those conversations. Many others have: Peldi, Amy Hoy, I think Brennan Dunn, and most especially Joel Spolsky.
    - edanm 11y ago
      That's very interesting. I remember Joel Spolsky most prominently for the idea of making a workplace that programmers love, which will bring revenues later. Interestingly enough, Patrick hasn't had any employees in his businesses, and has really modeled it differently in many ways. Then again, Joel Spolsky has written on many other topics, many of them more business oriented, e.g. the Ben & Jerry's vs. If you're reading this comment and haven't read articles by Joel Spolsky, you should really go read them now.
- pen2l 11y ago
  > I mean, maybe they'd have defended him no matter what side of the coin he was on, given that he's a pretty central member of the HN "tribe" Are you sure it's HN tribal thinking that resulted in the vehement defense of patio11? Because I have a different theory: I think a slightly different crowd is now the majority (most entrepreneurial, more money-oriented) from the old more hacker-oriented crowd at HN.
  - derefr 11y ago
    That's definitely a false "fall from grace" narrative. Hacker News was previously Startup News. There might be a few more SEO-types here than before, but the business and technology mix has always been pretty equal. (Unsurprisingly, it's about the same mix you'd expect from the cofounders of YC startups!)
- tptacek 11y ago
  I think you guys are kind of mixing up his product business, which was a passive income generator, and his consulting practice, for which Patrick never had the problem of not knowing to "charge more". (I'm one of his cofounders now, and have talked to him a lot about this, so I'll speak up for him while he's on his flight back to Tokyo).
  - Buge 11y ago
    I don't see any of the old posts mentioning consulting. I got the impression that the consulting work started after those old posts, possibly even because of them.
viraptor 11y ago
Isn't this a different case though? As I understand it, the price/tiers on BCC is heavily A/B tested which was discussed before (I can't find the post, maybe it was on the podcast?) The "charge more" idea is always mentioned in the context of negotiations, knowing what the customer can pay, knowing the no-confirmation level of corporate spending, etc. I don't think those ideas are incompatible. When you're selling mostly to teachers and people who have fun with kids you're not going to make millions.
StavrosK 11y ago
I hadn't seen that originally, but, while reading it, I thought "this seems to me exactly what Patrick did". So, it's too bad everyone attacked lionhearted when his advice was basically exactly correct.
thaumaturgy 11y ago
I was one of the participants in that thread. lionhearted's post got a bad reception because it didn't just stop at suggesting Patrick charge more, it went into armchair psychoanalysis and crossed the line into publicly pitying someone else. I like Sebastian, so I didn't rip him a new poop chute for his post. I think he unquestionably meant well. But it's a good lesson about being very careful in how you shine a spotlight on what you think someone else's issues are. IIRC it was tptacek that had a face-to-face with Patrick who changed his thinking the most on what he was worth after Patrick did some consulting for Matasano. tptacek has a pretty deft hand with that sort of thing. (Upvoted you, even though we disagree on what that thread was about it's still an interesting thing to point out.)

by pen2l 11y ago

derefr 11y ago

> And now patio11 is the posterboy for "charge more" I'd say that, if Patrick had believed in charging more from the start, he wouldn't be nearly as outspoken about it now. It is presumably (close to) the #1 thing he wishes he could tell younger-Patrick—but, since he can't, he's telling everyone else who'll listen. Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder what Patrick would have to say to the HN community at the time, the one who stood up to defend his undervaluation-of-self? I mean, maybe they'd have defended him no matter what side of the coin he was on, given that he's a pretty central member of the HN "tribe"—but I'd be interested in a corollary post to the "charge more" posts that goes more like "don't praise people for charging less."

zkhalique 11y ago
so patio11, was lionhearted an influence on you?
- tptacek 11y ago
  I have talked to Patrick at what I think he & I & Erin would agree is excruciating length on this subject and that name has never come up in those conversations. Many others have: Peldi, Amy Hoy, I think Brennan Dunn, and most especially Joel Spolsky.
  - edanm 11y ago
    That's very interesting. I remember Joel Spolsky most prominently for the idea of making a workplace that programmers love, which will bring revenues later. Interestingly enough, Patrick hasn't had any employees in his businesses, and has really modeled it differently in many ways. Then again, Joel Spolsky has written on many other topics, many of them more business oriented, e.g. the Ben & Jerry's vs. If you're reading this comment and haven't read articles by Joel Spolsky, you should really go read them now.
pen2l 11y ago
> I mean, maybe they'd have defended him no matter what side of the coin he was on, given that he's a pretty central member of the HN "tribe" Are you sure it's HN tribal thinking that resulted in the vehement defense of patio11? Because I have a different theory: I think a slightly different crowd is now the majority (most entrepreneurial, more money-oriented) from the old more hacker-oriented crowd at HN.
- derefr 11y ago
  That's definitely a false "fall from grace" narrative. Hacker News was previously Startup News. There might be a few more SEO-types here than before, but the business and technology mix has always been pretty equal. (Unsurprisingly, it's about the same mix you'd expect from the cofounders of YC startups!)
tptacek 11y ago
I think you guys are kind of mixing up his product business, which was a passive income generator, and his consulting practice, for which Patrick never had the problem of not knowing to "charge more". (I'm one of his cofounders now, and have talked to him a lot about this, so I'll speak up for him while he's on his flight back to Tokyo).
- Buge 11y ago
  I don't see any of the old posts mentioning consulting. I got the impression that the consulting work started after those old posts, possibly even because of them.

viraptor 11y ago

Isn't this a different case though? As I understand it, the price/tiers on BCC is heavily A/B tested which was discussed before (I can't find the post, maybe it was on the podcast?) The "charge more" idea is always mentioned in the context of negotiations, knowing what the customer can pay, knowing the no-confirmation level of corporate spending, etc. I don't think those ideas are incompatible. When you're selling mostly to teachers and people who have fun with kids you're not going to make millions.

StavrosK 11y ago

I hadn't seen that originally, but, while reading it, I thought "this seems to me exactly what Patrick did". So, it's too bad everyone attacked lionhearted when his advice was basically exactly correct.

thaumaturgy 11y ago

I was one of the participants in that thread. lionhearted's post got a bad reception because it didn't just stop at suggesting Patrick charge more, it went into armchair psychoanalysis and crossed the line into publicly pitying someone else. I like Sebastian, so I didn't rip him a new poop chute for his post. I think he unquestionably meant well. But it's a good lesson about being very careful in how you shine a spotlight on what you think someone else's issues are. IIRC it was tptacek that had a face-to-face with Patrick who changed his thinking the most on what he was worth after Patrick did some consulting for Matasano. tptacek has a pretty deft hand with that sort of thing. (Upvoted you, even though we disagree on what that thread was about it's still an interesting thing to point out.)