

 The Staggering Contribution That patio11 Is - shawndumas
http://searchyc.com/user/patio11?only=comments&sort=by_points

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rick888
maybe this is why his main app has barely cracked $25K/year after 5 years.

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chc
Or maybe it's the more-than-full-time job he was working until very recently.
I think that sounds more plausible.

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rick888
I don't know about that. I think it's because his target market generally
doesn't have a lot of money and or there isn't that much of a demand for bingo
card apps. Everyone around here says he is great in business. Yet, he's barely
making a living on it after many years.

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chc
Can you point to any projects on which you have expended equally little effort
with greater reward? Honestly, $25k a year isn't bad for a niche product that
just became a real business (as opposed to a little project started on a lark)
this year. You seem to be criticizing him for failing to achieve a goal he
didn't have.

You keep pointing to the "five years" number, but you're not specifying five
years as _what_. Because the answer is, "Five years as a Java program with
minimal effort going into its growth or profitability for most of the time."
You might say Photoshop existed for years in its creator's head — that doesn't
mean Adobe should have said, "This unimplemented software idea has made zero
profit. It's clearly DOA. We're not going to expend the resources to implement
it."

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rick888
"Can you point to any projects on which you have expended equally little
effort with greater reward? Honestly, $25k a year isn't bad for a niche
product that just became a real business (as opposed to a little project
started on a lark) this year. You seem to be criticizing him for failing to
achieve a goal he didn't have."

$25K is fine for a small project started on a lark. But it's not for a person
that is proclaimed as a business deity in the hacker news world (and JoS).

"You might say Photoshop existed for years in its creator's head"

Photoshop has a huge market and makes millions of dollars a year. Within the
first 5 years, It was most likely already clear that the market was there (it
should be with any business).

Patrick has talent. If I were him, I would have moved into a more profitable
market. Especially since, as you say, it doesn't seem to take him any time at
all to work on it.

