From a reader -
Hola,
I read your article http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-million-dollar-question and was very interesting.
After reading it some days ago, I came back again to read it again, you have good tips for starting a business and makes it look easy :)
I hope to get some victories from your newsletter.
Regards,
D
My reply:
Thanks. Doing business is fundamentally simple, but not necessarily easy.
I had a realization at one point that was pretty staggering -
You can ask anyone for money in exchange for anything at any time.
That's what business is. This article is relevant -
"What skills do you need to be an entrepreneur? Only two."
Of course, that doesn't mean it's always easy. But it is pretty simple at its core. Offer someone something in exchange for money.
Cheers and thanks for reaching out,
-S
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.
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Hmm. That doesn't seem very risky. I might as well download to see what it's all about.
