
Building an Empire with a Single Brick: Meet Patrick McKenzie - wglb
http://blog.bench.co/patrick-mckenzie?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=p_mac&utm_campaign=twitter_spon_p_mac
======
freshfey
Patrick has to be one of the nicest people in our community. Whenever I shot
him an email, even with the worst questions, he always took the time to
respond. And please keep in mind that he used to consult big companies at that
time and charge good money for it, but he always helped the community like
this.

Thank you Patrick and all the best with Starfighter.

~~~
hawkice
Something to note, for those who want to flood nice people with emails: I sent
him a couple emails (probably similarly stupid questions -- I recall one was
about his thoughts on Twilio having a "build your own appointment reminder"
page -- not a direct competitor for your customers, but that does seem a
little rude, no?), and never got a response. Nice people get busy, and it's
best to consider if clever googling / just trying it will be a better use of
the shared public resource called 'Patrick's Good Will'. In my case, I could
have just e.g. assumed his thoughts mirrored mine, because even if they
didn't, not really important to me.

------
solutionyogi
I came to USA in 2004 (I think right around time when he moved to Japan) and
learned about him first through Business of Software forum.
[http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.518897.4...](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.518897.48)

I still remember the first time I read about Bingo Card Creator. I immediately
dismissed the idea. But as noted in the article, it was a small brick and he
kept stacking them and look how far he has come.

Thanks to his advice, I have also made decent progress in my own career. As a
thank you, I wanted to get him a gift as a token of appreciation. And here's
what he replied:

"Nope. I tend to just buy things that I want, considering my wants are
generally small."

[https://twitter.com/patio11/status/334333114912481281](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/334333114912481281)

Patrick, you are a role model and an inspiration. Thank you for everything and
wish you all the best with your new venture.

------
ph0rque
"He works a (shocking) average of 20-25 hours a week—a stark contrast to his
former life as a salaryman."

Kudos @patio11! Will this pace continue with Starfighter? For your and your
family's sake, I hope so.

~~~
patio11
I'm hoping it does or I'm firing myself. The last few months dealing with the
BCC acquisition and getting SF running and AR settled down simultaneously have
been rather rough (a combination of raw hours and how many were between 1 AM
and 7 AM due to time zones).

~~~
tptacek
The modal message on our internal chat channel: "Why aren't you asleep,
Patrick?"

------
davidw
One of the things I loved about BCC is how it hit many of us over the head
with the idea that a product does not have to be 'cool' or innovative or even
really all that interesting to make money. Au contraire - bingo is about as
uncool and boring as you can get. It kind of opens your mind to new horizons
in business terms.

~~~
nether
I'm curious about other projects created in the same vein that are making
money. I saw a typing tutor webpage posted here on HN, and a stock portfolio
tracking service, but don't know if they ever became profitable.

~~~
akanet
MicroConf just concluded (patio11 spoke) and I spent the conference collecting
businesses doing just this.

My favorite two were

1\. Software for people who sell and install granite countertops to help their
customers preview what their counters are going to look like, doing millions
of ARR.

2\. Software to help high schools and colleges schedule umpires/referees for
sports leagues.

~~~
NeutronBoy
I did some (non-dev) work for a small software company in Australia who make
workflow software for car body shops.

There's so many 'niche' markets around that are worth millions if you can hit
them (but they're not sexy like social networking or consumer mobile apps)

------
nish1500
Making 30k a week, is very different from saying he made 30k some weeks. 120k
in Profit is hardly something I would call an 'Empire'.

I appreciate the sentiments of this community, its unquestioning reverence
towards Patrick, but the article is full of misleading statements. What is
factually correct, can still be grossly misleading.

~~~
the_rosentotter
> I appreciate the sentiments of this community, its unquestioning reverence
> towards Patrick

I honestly don't. I mean, nice guy, sure, and a great writer, but I don't see
that he has built anything I consider particularly inspiring, or successful.
In fact he has had quite a few misses, which were announced with the usual
self-assured write-ups, only to disappear later.

(I only say this in light of the surprisingly large following patio11 has, he
is certainly more accomplished than I or most most posters here will probably
ever be.)

~~~
bricabrac
Personally, I think he's one of the most inspiring examples of personal
success that I've seen on HN.

I know I'm not brilliant enough to change the world with some new
revolutionary invention or discovery, and spending years killing myself to try
and build some ultimately ephemeral business empire holds zero attraction for
me. Achieving a comfortable lifestyle in which I work for myself and can
reserve most of my time for my friends, family, and hobbies is my main
aspiration, and patio11's success at building that lifestyle is enormously
inspirational.

------
fixxer
$30k/week? Would love to read more about how that worked. I thought my
$180/hour with $1k per diem for on-site was phenomenal.

Jeez, I need to charge more.

~~~
weaksauce
I'm curious what justification you use for a daily allowance of $1,000. Are
you renting ferraris, eating fabulous lunches and dinners, and staying in a
plush hotel?

Or do you not mean per diem in the literal sense?

~~~
fixxer
I hate going on-site. It is a waste of time. It is a "go away" price.

EDIT: And companies routinely pay for it.

~~~
viggity
care to share your line of business?

~~~
fixxer
in between software engineer and ds these days

~~~
viggity
ds = data scientist?

~~~
fixxer
Correct.

------
smoyer
If you've read much of Patrick's writing (over on Kalzumeus), you won't find
anything surprising in this article - still as authentic and consistent as
ever.

------
rdrey
I didn't know about patio11's podcast
([https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kalzumeus-software-
podca...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kalzumeus-software-
podcasts/id560734474?mt=2)), subscribed! Great article.

------
mijoharas
"Another thing—be clear with your clients in terms of what their expectations
are, and provide falsifiable success metrics"

I'm going to assume that that is a typo (and they meant unfalsifiable) as it
doesn't really make sense in the context of what I've heard about Patrick
before.

~~~
pjmorris
I think they're referring to the philosopher Karl Popper's notion of
'falsifiability', the idea that a claim must be possible to proven false to be
admissible in a scientific theory.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)

~~~
mijoharas
ok, this makes lot of sense, I guess I somewhat misparsed the text.

EDIT: I wonder if it counts as misreading or misunderstanding, to not notice
that a word is an auto-antonym?

~~~
wglb
How is that an antonym? The point to "falsifiable" is the statement is made
about an event is capable of being false, not that it is false.

~~~
mijoharas
auto-antonym[0] is a word that means both one thing, and something else that
is the opposite of that. This dictionary[1] (second result on google) has
definition one meaning the opposite of definition two, thus the word is an
auto-antonym.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-
antonym](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym)

[1]
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/falsifiable](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/falsifiable)

~~~
roel_v
Those two definitions aren't opposites of each other. They're two different
things.

------
humanarity
This guy is awesome. I read some articles of his on kalzumeus ages ago and
thought, "he really gets it." To see the pic of him and know more about him is
really great. Thanks for this post.

------
3stripe
Ohhhhhhhhh, Patrick is the Bingo Card Creator dude!

Somehow I didn't make that connection before, even though I follow him on
Twitter.

~~~
flinty
You probably know him as patio11

------
mastermojo
I noticed the bench.co link in the article, without even realizing the article
was hosted on bench.co. Very clever content rich way to do marketing.

"For example, Bench handles all of Patrick’s bookkeeping. He’s grateful for
the freedom to “never think about it again.”"

~~~
tchock23
He has mentioned Bench a few times as a business model/company he admires in
various podcasts he's been on. I wasn't surprised in the slightest when I saw
that he was featured on their blog. Either they got word of it, or he reached
out to them to be featured (I'm guessing the former).

------
option_greek
“Brick by brick, the wall gets higher, and then suddenly, a wall.” All it
takes is one brick, and the commitment to doing it again tomorrow.

Wow.

~~~
awavering
Amy Hoy has a great elaboration on this strategy at
[https://unicornfree.com/stacking-the-
bricks](https://unicornfree.com/stacking-the-bricks)

------
late2part
I love the articles and comments Patrick makes. He helps remind us that there
are good intelligent people in this world with good hearts.

------
peterfirefly
Get that photographer to take more pictures, Patrick!

~~~
patio11
He only does weddings, so that's unlikely.

~~~
peterfirefly
That's a pity. It's the best picture of you that I've seen.

------
steamy
_By the end of his stint as a consultant, he was making $30,000 a week_

Upon hearing this, The IRS is drooling all over the place.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Speaking of starfighter (it's in TFA), is an alien race going to abduct people
who are good at starfighter?
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/)

