This feels like a thinly-veiled attack on Patrick McKenzie's character, backed up with zero factual evidence.
I've known Patio11 personally for going on 5 years. He's one of the most honest people I know and I've seen him donate countless hours to helping fellow bootstrappers.
If you don't know him or his story first-hand, and haven't seen the hundreds (thousands?) of hours he's donated to the bootstrapper community, you should familiarize yourself with his story before commenting on this thread.
I've only met patio11 in person very briefly (thaks to rwalling's MicroConf), but everything I saw confirmed the idea that he's a very nice, helpful person.
Harass him? What an outrageously transparent attempt to prejudice the audience, which in this case happens to also be for your own benefit as well: Good judgment would have been that you should stay away from these threads (for those who don't know, tptacek is a cofounder, with patio11, of their "turn HN fame into value" startup), but instead you come rushing in guns blazing.
I found the consulting story incredibly dubious. None of the facts meshed, and I find those sorts of pie in the sky stories to actually be destructive to people entering or in the industry. If you find skepticism "harassment" -- does fame on HN make one untouchable -- you have a very perverse sentiment of what that is.
I think you're having some trouble with the concept of "facts".
Once again: speaking as a consultant myself, and working in a field among many competing consultancies: Patrick's consulting experience is not at all atypical. Patrick was not a top-tier consultant, nor were his outcomes. People start consultancies and do much, much better than he did, or than I did. You seem to imply that you haven't, but I'm not sure why that's something you want to keep highlighting.
(I edited this comment to remove a bit of vitriol from the top, and to add the response to this anonymous commenter's claim that Patrick's experience is atypical, before which mine was a one-line comment.)
> FACT: Patrick's posts about consulting -- which sort of came out of nowhere,
Not a fact. You can go back and read about Patricks consulting efforts at least to 2010. At the time he claimed (and I have no reason to doub) to be billing out around ~5k a week (for his first few engagements).
You can also read through his posts as he mentions walking up his rate.
Again, its possible he was making all this up in a multi-year scheme to make elaborate claims. Personally, I'll take the evidence to read him as being truthful. Especially as it jives with what I've seen paid for consulting on the consumer side.
Speaking as a former client of Patrick's familiar with his rate card, and as a consultant: those are, in fact, facts.
This is the second thread in which you've called Patrick a liar. In the next thread you find to do it in, you'll be calling me one as well.
I don't know why you find it so difficult to believe that people can be as successful consulting as Patrick has, because, in the grand scheme of consulting, Patrick isn't anomalously successful. Regardless, you're wrong, and you should stop writing comments like this.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. It seems like you are saying "Patio11 clearly is lying about his consulting rates and the sale of BCC proves it."
What I don't understand is how you make that leap. BCC is the single most documented thing Patrick has done. The finances are there for review. You'd need to assume that the whole thing was an elaborate multi-year lie to think that he is embellishing the BCC numbers. This sale fits the numbers (though I don't know if we know the sale price) and therefore I view it as evidence that Patrick wasn't lying, at least about BCC. Am I reading that wrong in your view?
Or am I to assume that Patrick, whose writings on BCC are reasonable and backed up, then pivoted when it came to writing about consulting and started making things up? I guess I can see that happening, but how would a piece of data (the sale of BCC) that backs up many of his claims both about the financials and his own motivations help me discern that?
It seems like you are saying "Patio11 clearly is lying about his consulting rates and the sale of BCC proves it."
The root of this thread is someone who is a little surprised at how small of a transaction the sale of BCC was. Despite all of the transparency, a lot of people had a much greater sense of success, and it is a little like finding out that the stock guru had a yearly return of 2%. That is neither here nor there, and I have no comment or interest in BCC and related ventures, and was only tangentially commenting on the notion of inflated success, and with that reputation for wisdom/knowledge.
On the consulting side, I'm not saying that he's lying, however many people defensively jump to that conclusion. More generally I am saying that history has shown that a lot of people do lie (embellish, exaggerate, etc) to get attention, which leads to a situation where the onus of proof is on the speaker, increasingly so when there are extraordinary claims. I found the post about consulting simply extraordinary, and I have no reason to give anyone a pass just because.
> The root of this thread is someone who is a little surprised at how small of a transaction the sale of BCC was.
I think the sale numbers line up very well with what I would expect given the numbers actually posted (if anything I'm surprised the sale price is as high as it is). Is your thesis that people should lower their expectations about how much recurring revenue businesses are worth? If so, I agree.
> I'm not saying that he's lying.
You'd be better off if you were. Instead you are employing classic and cowardly character assassination techniques. There is literally nothing Patrick or his defenders can do to refute your claim (mostly because you refuse to make one). Even if they did, you could fall back to the safety of saying "I wasn't saying Patrick specifically is a liar, I was posting about people generally."
Instead you are employing classic and cowardly character assassination techniques.
This is the "untouchable" argument that attempts to short circuit any critical discussion. If skepticism is a character assassination, then hopefully we're all assassins.
There is literally nothing Patrick or his defenders can do to refute your claim (mostly because you refuse to make one).
Nor is there any specific thing I can do to disprove their claims. A bit of a catch-22, isn't it? As incredibly uncommon as their claims of success in the consulting world may be -- and I'm not saying this out of the blue -- it is possible that somehow they lucked into a series of incredibly generous clients who saw BCC as such a success that they gave a blank check. I have never seen an individual consultant without an incredible reputation (and being famous on HN != being famous) make anything near what they claimed, but it remains possible.
Pretty much anything is possible. If someone claimed to have achieved alchemy (theoretically possible via fusion), I similarly couldn't possibly say "no, they're lying!".
It's possible. I think it's incredibly improbable, but it is simply impossible for me to say that it's a lie.
There is no double standard. If patio11 were insinuating that you were a liar, I'd ask him to come right out and say it as well. Skepticism/critical discussion is no cover for rhetorical techniques that amount to trolling.
So 1) stop insinuating he is a liar or 2) make it more concrete. Do you think he is a liar and if so what do you think he is lying about and why? What would it take to make you stop spreading said accusation?
That would be a skeptical argument that could be critically discussed. As it stands, your position is "in the face of lots of evidence that patio11 has produced that indicates he usually writes the truth, I refuse believe him about this specific thing for reasons I will not outline."
I for one believe him because of his long track record of writing things that are verifiable and my own experience as a consumer of consultant products.
>Do you think he is a liar and if so what do you think he is lying about and why?
I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish. While I don't agree with user=irrigation's comments, I think he's been pretty clear: the claims don't jibe with his experience as a consultant and he's skeptical about the self-promotional aspects. It's hardly ambiguous.
So why are you demanding he come out and call patio11 a liar? That would be an asshole move. Instead he's saying "I don't believe it", and there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. We're all just "some guy" on the internet, who cares?
He hasn't come out and said I don't believe it (or hadn't as I wrote these comments). He's insinuated that it isn't believable, or that patio11 is lying, but he hasn't just made the claim.
That's what I'm hoping he will say instead of insinuation about a specific person. 1) make a claim. 2) put some counter claims along with it ("I've been doing consulting for X years and never seen a charge rate greater than Y") 3) and if necessary point out what it would take to change the position.
You are right though, I probably shouldn't care, but I really dislike the behavior in this case. It seems like simple trolling trying to hide behind dissent. Which is a disservice to all of us.
I've met him once, at a hacker news meetup. I've exchanged 7 emails with him, regarding a phone call he wanted to have with me, about something that is in one of my areas of expertise. We had said phone call that lasted around 1 hour. He asked me questions, I answered them. No money was exchanged (nor expected) and no quid pro quo's expected. Originally, it was meant to be lunch, but that didn't fit in our schedules.
This happened in the last month. Prior to that I had no interactions with him outside of his blog and hacker news. I've been following his blog for a very long time (in fact his blog introduced me to hacker news, not vice versa). I still read his blog via RSS but do not listen to his podcast or subscribe to his newsletter as the topics covered are largely outside of my interests.
I believe Patrick, not because I've met him in the last month, but because his writing is compelling, the things I can verify are truthful, and the things I cannot match my other experiences.
If I had any complaint about his post about money its that he is assuming that his readership understand implicitly concepts such as fully-loaded employee costs, bill rate vs utilization rate and bill rate in comparison to costs of delivery. I think that is largely untrue and he would have been better served with a summary paragraph describing appropriate ways to compare bill rate to employee take home pay.
None of that has anything to do with this particular post, which as I've mentioned, only adds to Patrick's credibility as it is an outside entity stating that the numbers, at least with regard to BCC, are truthful.
Funny how so many people with verifiable backgrounds, who are clearly not related to Patrick except through HN, vouch for him, yet we are apparently "shills".
Not sure what needs to happen for us to not be taken that way.
Dividing the world into "shills" and "skeptics" doesn't seem like a pleasant way to live. At any rate, it's no way to participate in a community, and you should (again) stop doing it.
>> patio11 gave advice on consulting which, as a long time consultant -- rather successfully (but still not enough to start doling wisdom) -- I found completely at odds with the reality I've endured, but it's a big world so maybe I just fly in different circles.
Just a thought, informed only by your comments here: your attitude is probably limiting your success. Nobody likes negativity, or working with negative people.
More concretely, successful consultants sell possibility: an organization can be stronger, faster, better, more successful than their goals if only they hire me as a consultant. Your attitude screams the opposite.
Just my unbiased feedback (I've never met Patrick and don't have a dog in this fight).
I just wanted to chime in quickly. I've found much of the advice given by patio11 to be plain wrong in my experience.
These conversations quickly fill up with Latin phrases barely copied out of wikipedia and I don't have the time or patience to discuss this with people I know nothing about.
Take this as you wish, most of the stuff he says is exactly what a person looking in would THINK, but it is not the truth.
And maybe thats the difference between your experience and patio11's?
He did take the time (and lots of it) to write up his advice (though if you read his earlier stuff it was much less advice and much more "here is this thing I'm doing, lets see if it works").
He also has near endless patience when discussing this stuff with others. It doesn't hurt that he is a persuasive writer, and it is a skill he has obviously and publicly worked at.
I for one would love to hear an opposing viewpoint, especially if it could be as well written and the author allowed as much access as patio11 does.
Yes I am. I make analytics applications for sales&marketing departments. Forecasting/Simulation, Segmentation, Text analytics, etc. Typical client - establishment with 500-1000 employees. Projects are delivered to the clients as a SaaS solution, because they need maintenance. Quarterly invoices, 1 year minimum contract.
Awesome. That sounds like a lucrative space to be in: presumably, everything you get asked to do is directly in the service of making companies more money, and so you can anchor your prices to the value you're providing.
What part of Patrick's consulting advice doesn't ring true to you?
(I spent a little over 10 years as a software engineering consultant, ending just last year when I started this new company; when the consultancy I cofounded sold, we had around 30 people on the team).
Penetration testing is not really software engineering consulting, and security spending is about as far as you can get from anchoring pricing to value. It's closer to selling insurance, but the value is even more dubious.
The exception might be in cases where a company is already spending a lot on security by doing it poorly, and you show them how to do it better. But, that is pretty much none of the market that I've seen.
Our modal project was part of the software engineering budget of a software product company.
I think you may think Matasano was more of an IT shop than it actually was. The term "penetration testing" doesn't do anyone any favors, since it means everything from "running Metasploit" (the kind of work we did not do) to "evaluating firmware".
This is really neither here nor there, right; the more specialized you want to say our work does, the stronger my consulting advice gets.
There are too many little things to sit down and make an argument. That's why I didn't want to get into a debate. You either see this or you don't. It's not easy to show it, but I will make just 1 example not to be completely without foundation.
The context is making (high touch) enterprise sales. In a blog post he reveals "the secret" that departments/teams have a credit card and purchaes below certain threshold are made with it and without allocating budget. He advices the reader to price his product/service to fall bellow that threshold so people in the department can purchase on their own discretion. It sounds logical and $6,000/year is a nice sum if you don't do a lot of custom stuff for clients.
On the other hand, you want your invoice's line to be as high on their books as possible. If your service is on some low manager's sheet, you are nobody there. He gets moved, quits, the company decides to cut costs or a thousand other things - you lose the client. You don't want a nobody pushing the needle for you on their side. You want it sponsored by a Director at the very least, but VP and above are more desirable. You want to be vetted. You want to be on the Approved Vendor List. You don't want payments every month, you want them on lumpier sums.
When reading something, it is a good exercise to think about the opposing situation for a second.
One of the strange things about the software business is that software is an iterative process where the rate of iteration can go from linear to polynomial to exponential very fast. Another strange thing is that if you are a software guy, the whole world is your customer. The third strange thing is the constant reinvention of old wisdom, repackaged in new frameworks, languages, platforms.
These three strange things then combine in weird ways to take on a life of their own.
Had BCC been written in a prior era, it would have been some MFC code that ran only on windows 95 boxes, shipped on a dozen floppies, and purchased by atmost a few dozen people who bought a printed copy of Dr.Dobbs and looked at an ad for BCC and said, Hey, I need to make my own bingo cards.
But because he had a web app and priced it right and iterated upon feedback, the whole world came knocking on his door.
To be fair, when he first started writing about BCC it wasn't a web app. The web app came as part of the iterative process (not that this detracts from your argument).
The reality is aspirational marketing works when you are building a personal brand.
I wouldn't really say Patio11 embellishes or lies, I'd say he employs standard marketing techniques.
I realize you may thing this as a "rationale" for why its okay but I don't think it is. Marketing and selective disclosure is a fact of life. If you don't read between the lines, it really is on you for most things in life regardless of the reality of the situation.
Its a large part of why I'm in favor of regulation. Many, many people get screwed precisely because they can't read between the lines.
I think you're going a bit too far about criticising "standard marketing techniques". What will you do if you want to contract for others? Why is it not "Publish as much information about your research and skills as possible"? (this is the standard marketing technique here)
I'm not really sure what is wrong with this. It's not like he's just publishing infomercial with no experience. He's got lots of experience we see (BCC, conferences, published software, all the blogs) and don't see (contracting) and lots of exposure in programming community. Realistically, he's probably one of the reasons many people on HN know what A/B testing is. It's a huge personal brand... and what exactly is wrong with it?
I'm not even sure what kind of regulation would apply in this case.
I did read your comment. You said the quoted rationale is not ok. So what's wrong with it?
> I realize you may thing this as a "rationale" for why its okay but I don't think it is.
Also if you write that we should read between the lines as a comment on something, I'll will read between the lines that you've got some negative opinion here, but you didn't share it.
Yeah, about that, you realize that all those people suckered into ARM loans they couldn't afford during the housing crisis was precisely because they couldn't read between the lines?
>you realize that all those people suckered into ARM loans they couldn't afford during the housing crisis was precisely because they couldn't read between the lines?
Maybe, just maybe, there were a few who said, "I'm going to flip this house before the interest rates adjust, so who cares what it says between those lines?" or "I'll live in this house while I can afford it, and when I can't I'll mail in the keys and leave the bank hanging for a loan I agreed to pay back in good faith."
I never said they were. But requiring clear, obvious warnings on things is a large fraction of regulation and the relevant part to "helping people who can't read between the lines".
Regulation is rarely an outright ban, especially in this context.
Or he had somewhat passive success with some SEO/other tricks and excitedly shared them to a good feedback loop. Works as marketing but I doubt marketing was his first thought.
...yeah. No offense, but that stuff doesn't "happen" organically like that except with lottery winner odds.
I've had to grow traffic for sites before. Generally, even if its good content, you have to put some effort into driving traffic to it. Which is marketing. At which point, you are doing it to market something. The first thought is marketing.
Explains how it wasn't necessarily his first thought. In the beginning, it was HN comments where the first thought is more sharing content you feel is relevant, or the gamification of karma.
I'm responding to you and at no point do I feel like I am marketing "prawn" or anything I do online. I'd use a relevant username for one thing!
> Works as marketing but I doubt marketing was his first thought.
The fact anybody cares about this at all is a testament to Patrick's masterful manipulation of online audiences.
The fact you believe "I doubt marketing was his first thought" is why it works so well. You don't realize you're being manipulated into internalizing the personal brand of someone more clever than you.
Few years back I had a side project start making $20-30k/yr passive from about an hour's worth of effort, total. I don't talk about it (or wouldn't talk about it further) to market it or me, but just because it's a novel story that people find interesting. From the early days of talking about BCC, I recognised the same wonder in patio11.
> I'm not trying to be overly negative, but I think these dreamy, sometimes delusional posts can lead people astray, thinking that they're missing out on some great riches that everyone else is claiming to be achieving.
I'm not a psychologist, and I don't know you personally, but is it possible that maybe you feel a bit misled because you think you might be missing out on some great riches that everyone else is claiming to be achieving?
I think that, at the end of the day, everyone has a bullshit detector, but everyone's bullshit threshold is going to be determined by how close they are to greatness (whether they themsleves are achieving it, or the people around them are achieving it). For me, HN represents a rare intersection of do'ers and dreamers. Are all the people who claim to be "doing" actually doing it? Of course not, but there are still valuable lessons here. There are enough lessons in Patio11's posts that even if he were exaggeratting his claims to promote his brand (and I don't perosnally think that he is), I'd still consider his contributions to be worthwhile reading.
Skepticism is a healthy thing in moderation, but I for one, would rather be surrounded by a lot of people who are optimistic (if a bit boastful), then a lot of people who are pessimistic and critical, but I'd trade them both for genuine friends with efficacy and cogency.
This sounds like a variation of the "you're just jealous" reply, which is an easy, convenient retort to virtually all skepticism for even the most incredible claims. When we want something to be true, the easiest way to undermine doubts are to cry jealousy.
Super weight loss regime. Visit with aliens. Top secret NSA/CIA/FBI/FSB clearance. Quintuple black belt. No-effort muscle building technique. Endless success with the ladies. Exponential stock market success. All demonstrated by just words?
Doubts and questions = jealousy. It is the charlatan's ally among human denial techniques.
Two wrongs don't make a right, so whatever follows here notwithstanding: your point is fair.
But the GP did say this:
People lie. People embellish. Many people can even contrive rationale for why doing that is okay. Human nature.
That can reasonably be inferred, from context, as an attack on Patrick's personality. Not saying it is for sure, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to interpret it that way.
In that light, shifting the personality blame game back on GP is less damning than you make it sound. It's still not the golden standard of rhetoric, sure. But there is something to be said for it.
Consider it "defending a friend." Patrick's being personally attacked, OP attacks back.
Again, two wrongs don't make a right. But this one is defensible.
You're not "being overly negative" or being "a skeptical sort". You are launching an ad-hominem attack; you are attempting (knowingly or not) to character assassinate patio11 without any basis in fact.
Just because you think there is a lot of bullshit paraded as fact on HN, does not give you a license to do so without people calling you out on it or down voting you - even if you hide behind the "hopefully people aren't uncivilized enough to just down vote here".
I have a very simple heuristic* I use to screen for the BS-factor. More transparency -> less likely to be BSing. Mostly backed up by people that you can see are closely related to the person in question -> more likely to be BS. So in this case I'd say the BS-potential is very low (from just following on the sidelines).
*it was developed to screen poker coaching in the high days of online poker. Turns out many people made wild claims about their winrates that weren't true to paddle coaching. Shocking, I know but very transferable to business consulting, agile coaching and the like.
This is what has always worked in Patrick's favour.
He shared the details of how and why the revenues of BCC grew for many years, figures which were sufficiently normal for them not to appear to be the product of luck or lies.
Similarly he's never pretended to be a proficient corporate ladder climber when writing about salary negotiations; we know his advice comes from reading about best practices and selling consulting rather than his experience of honouring his salaryman agreement. And we know he's more effective amateur than Aaron Ross when it comes to turning some inbound leads into enterprise contracts for Appointment Reminder.
And afaik he doesn't even have a $300 eBook on special offer today at only $199, or a $999 business opportunity also including six webinars totally free. But apparently many people have found his publicly accessible and gimmick-free blog to be worth their time reading.
If it doesn't walk like a duck or quack like a duck, but does weigh in with an awful lot of useful free advice...
> ... on HN -- an endless series of aspirational stories of unending success and riches, then segued into pitching a book or web product/startup.
I've wasted many hours on HN and recall zero stories here of unending riches that segued into pitching a book. Perhaps you could enlighten me with one example?
I've been following Patrick for many years here on HN. Many people have. So many of the things you've written in this thread are wrong, and even worse, incredibly mean or mean-spirited.
This comment is for anyone else who might not have been around HN a long time, and isn't sure what's going on here. Here's the rub - Patrick is a very well known member of this community, has helped an incredible amount of people, and over the last few years has had a lot of success in consulting and building products.
I'm not sure if the parent (irrigation) is "just trolling" or sincerely believes that Patrick is lying about his success (and although irrigation doesn't say so in this comment, irrigation clearly claims that Patrick is lying in other comments).
irrigation - if you really think Patrick is lying, then remember that he's been around these forums (and others!) for many years, many people here know him personally, the engagements he's had have been with other very well known companies - are they all lying? Or is Patrick just somehow manipulating everyone to make these incredible claims, by somehow getting engagements with well known companies, writing about them, the companies themselves writing about them, but he's manipulating all the numbers?
And all this multi-year effort is for what? To market a startup that has nothing to do with his main expertise anyway? Seriously, that is really ridiculous.
"Just as rationally, I can declare that I'm not sure if you're "just shilling".
Fair enough. I apologize, and will continue answering assuming you're talking in good faith.
"I have never said that he is lying. I have implied that the situation might be aggrandized/exaggerated, or a very atypical one-off, absolutely."
Patrick has explicitly said it wasn't a one off, and stated very explicit rates. So if you are implying that this isn't true, I'm not sure how that isn't implying he's lying. (And I will point out that many of the people in this thread also think you are calling him a liar - rationally speaking, if the way you communicate leads a lot of people to a misunderstanding of your statement, I suggest that you might want to change something).
But let's not quibble over semantics. I'm fine calling it "exaggerating" if you prefer, and I'd argue just as strongly that he isn't exaggerating.
"Now you claim that there's all sort of evidence of these $10K, $20K, $30K, $40K per week engagements. There is none. Absolutely none, beyond a cofounder and a serial booster who suddenly claims to have lots of experience being a consumer of consultants."
So, Thomas being Patrick's partner is very new. He was for many years the head of a company, during which time he also said he hired Patrick. Again, this was long before they worked together. You can verify that Thomas' company existed, and was acquired, here: http://www.csoonline.com/article/2135259/security-leadership...
I'm also not sure what a "serial booster" is in your statement, I'll be happy if you can clarify.
I can't explicitly prove the engagement rates, but if you want an example of a very well known and respectable company that explicitly talks about Patrick being their consultant, you can read Patrick's article on Fog Creek Software's blog, which starts:
"Editor’s Note: Patrick McKenzie has done some work with Fog Creek last October and this May, focusing on improving our marketing."
Again, all I'm saying is, rationally speaking, lets look at the evidence - despite your protestations about Thomas being Patrick's partner, this is a very new development. Thomas has been talking about Patrick for years, and verifies Patrick's rate. Thomas is verifiably the owner of a consultancy that was acquired, also making him able to verify those rates.
Fog Creek, a large software company, also talks about Patrick working for them. That's another verificaiton that he's worked with these kinds of customers (not verification of the rate, though).
By the way, Patrick didn't "suddenly" talk about these rates - he's been talking about charging at least $10k per week for a few years, but only recently mentioned the specific prices.
Here's a question - what would it take to convince you that Patrick is not exaggerating? Cause at least from where I'm standing, it looks like all the evidence points in one direction. This is without even looking at the fact that lots of other well known members of the community have met and talked with Patrick, and vouch for his honesty and his methods. Also not looking at the ton of content which a lot of people have used to better themselves.
For the record, I also owned a consultancy, which was acquired by a large company. I didn't charge Patrick's rates, but I have no doubt they are achievable (in certain lines of work, mind you).
Agreed, I think amongst HNers the idea that success can be achieved simply by using focused "analytics" and one's own smarts is particularly appealing.
