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The Genius and Tragedy of Patrick McKenzie

I. This post outlines Patrick McKenzie - a brilliant technologist and entrepreneur - how he's done such amazing things and learned so much, and why he's getting drastically underpaid and how it's his own fault. This post will be most valuable for technologists who underestimate themselves and undervalue themselves.

II. Hacker News is the best tech community on the internet, and patio11 - Patrick McKenzie - is the best contributor there. I don't even think that's controversial, I think it would be near universally agreed by the HN crowd that Patrick has made as many or more important contributions as anyone.

If you're from Hacker News, you know Patrick already. But for my readers that don't know him, let me give you a quick overview.

III. Patrick is a multi-faceted genius, and I don't throw the word genius around casually.

Patrick McKenzie is many things - he's an expatriate to Japan, he's a talented coder, tester, metrics/split-testing/analytics user, a great writer, extremely modest and helpful. He can recruit people, evaluate talent, and manage people well. He understands ROI very well and is good at purchasing advertising. He's good at customer service. Outsourcing. Automation. Coding. Ecommerce.

Entrepreneur

What's an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is someone who dreams faint, weak dreams... takes that spark, that combination of lines of thought... and uses his minds and hand to try to shepherd that into reality.

But if only it were that simple...

These ideas start as such hazy dreams, and the young entrepreneur starts with resources so limited. He starts so ignorant, so overmatched, so naive, so "behind schedule," so... so out-gunned and facing the impossible...

The only thing that keeps him going is he's too stupid and naive to realize how much is in front of him, the complete depths of his ignorance, just how irrationally exuberant he is...