"Max" the reason people read your articles is because you've said you make $40K a month from niche iphone apps.
Mark (lets drop the pretense) you sound like you have read Positioning by Ries, A. and Trout,J (http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/044...).
Your positioning this "Max" character as the idealized serial entrepreneur. Globe trotting, living in 5 star hotel, identifying markets, working out those
niche products. I'm sure that idealized person is something many people here want to replicate.
That's only half the story though isn't it? The reality is your $40K a month is made from these apps (http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/feather-moor-ltd/id3053457...)
1 star apps with content ripped from sites like ehow.com. Lets not forget that feather+moor are your creation as well.
Would people read 37signals in the same light if they actually made their money by running casino affiliate sites?
Would people read joel on software in the same light if he actually made his money from porn sites?
Would people read Paul Graham articles in the same light if he actually made his money selling teeth whitening ads?
You are not hiding your identity because of privacy, your hiding it because the reality of your success doesn't fit with the image you've created for Max.
"Max" is not real because he is only half the story.
If there is an aspiring journalist in the audience, now would be a good time to track down Mr. Essien and the various other players involved, interview them and put together a definitive account of as much as is known. It would make a decent cover article for Fast Company, or do it as a blog with raw information dumps and crowdsourcing the factchecking.
You'd be rather disappointed, I think. I'm not secretly Michael Arrington. And any aspiring journalist should feel free to come question me - the details of how long it takes me to walk to work or how my back-ache is doing would make for an interesting story for me, but I'm not sure many will care otherwise.
Undramatic? But, the knife fights, the tense meetings with corrupt Chinese officials who could have you thrown in jail, the forty thousand a month, the 5-star hotels; all of that, undramatic?
The problem is that you are now an unreliable narrator; you may not even be the protagonist in your own story any more. Who is Max Klein? A cipher, a nobody, an anonymous entrepreneur sharing his tales from behind a veil of mild obfuscation? Or is he a device in a larger scheme? Perhaps he is an advertisement for a correspondence school? A scheme to defraud a Saudi prince? A character escaped from a novel, whom the author is desperately trying to contain? Who knows?
Drama comes from the choice of words - every narrative can be told in an exciting way. Everybody has had similarly dramatic experiences, but they are not writing about them. My dramatic experiences, which are less than 10 articles, are spread out over 7 years. I'm sure anyone can find interesting things he has done in the last 7 years.
I'm 29 years old. At 21 you may not have seen a lot, but at 29, you have enough independent years to have gone through a few adventures.
And I've gone through a LOT more than the few I have written in my blog, those are just the ones that made sense for that blog.
So what? HN also rabidly follows a guy that sells bingo cards. It's not about what you do, what's interesting is how you do it, and the story you tell doing that.
Project management and bug tracking software is pretty boring, if you ask me. But the lessons from joel and 37s are anything but boring.
In fact, I would be very interested in blogs from someone who runs a sucessful porn site, just because the challenges involved are emblematic of any startup -- how do you acquire customers in such a commoditized market? How do you keep them coming back, how do you monetize them? The technical side (scaling, etc) would make for good reading, too.
> HN also rabidly follows a guy that sells bingo cards.
HN rabidly follows a guy who tells us he sells bingo cards, and who actually sells bingo cards. It's interesting to hear him talk about it, because when he tells us about a challenge he overcame, it's a legitimate challenge to his actual business.
Is "Max" telling us the truth about his actual business, and telling us actual lessons learned and challenges overcome, or just spinning clever tales? BlackwoodHolt seems to think it's mostly clever tales, and Max hasn't done a good job of dispelling that yet.
I, too, would be interested to hear from someone who ran a successful porn site. But I wouldn't want to hear lessons about making a living on bingo cards from someone who actually made their money at porn and only had a tiny bingo card business on the side.
Nobody, "Max" included, has talked about making money in a method than claimed otherwise. From most indications, his apps are legit. Unglamorous, sure, but I don't think that's reason to "hide" behind a veil of secrecy, as the GP is implying. The only strange thing here is that he works under pseudonyms, but whatever.
Don't get me wrong, I think the investigative work going into this is interesting and it is adding another dimension to this Max character. But HN, lighten up. This place takes everything so seriously it's almost stodgy sometimes.
I completely agree, the point i was trying to make with those examples was that those people are up front in how they made their money. Mark is not, he either outright avoids the question or claims that he is doing niche applications and revealing them would destroy his business.
If he was upfront like patio11 (the bingo card guy) i would never of done any digging. However everything i've seen from Mark seems like a calculated manipulation to be viewed in a certain way.
patio11 appears to genuinely be here to share. Marks actions appear to be about building an audience for some unknown future purpose (ebook?,conference talks?,who knows).
I have no wish to do either ebooks, conferences or video interviews, all of which I have already been invited to, and have declined.
I'm writing because I've been writing on the internet since 1999, and on this website for more than 3 years.
I write, not because it's a big conspiracy or I'm trying to sell you vitamin pills that will allow you pleasure your woman all night, but because I enjoy writing. It's just a hobby - there is no commercial gain - no ads, no trying to sell you my products, no conferences, etc.
That's why 37signals and all those people write. They are selling you shit. I'm not - I'm just a normal hobbyist blogger.
There is really no conspiracy, and the details of my life are unfortunately quite boring - the interesting parts I've already written out as stories.
Yes, Max/Mark/whoever is maddeningly vague sometimes. I'm not disputing that. I do think his paranoia is a bit unwarranted, but he does seems to value privacy.
Now, if he just outright lied, well then that's shameful. I think the digging that you have done is really interesting, but this whole thing is starting to feel like a witch hunt. He might work under pseudonyms, sure, but at least his apps/etc seem legit.
I think it becoming to feel like a witch hunt because "Max" has not directly address whether he is Mark Essien, so everyone is speculating.
His apps are legit, in that they exist but they do appear to contain content scraped from internet without any apparent attribution. Given the random mix of sources i don't think he has written permission from demand media (ehow.com) or the other random places the content comes from. His revenue claims may or may not be true, or may HAVE been true.
Notice "Seller:Mark-Anthony Essien", so that links Max to Mark.
More importantly though his second name is Anthony not Max or Klein (like he claims in that blog article).
This combined with Marks willingness to actually meet people in real life as Max makes me question why he writes and his end goal with his writings and half truths.
I'll leave it there, people have the information that is out there and that was my only goal posting these messages, to inform.
What you do is an important component of the whole story, it can completely change the meaning and value of the "how" and it give context.
And regarding patio, objectively we are on a completely different level, in his case i was never puzzled by the fact that one of his post reached the first page (does this make me one of those rabid followers?).
The guy that sells bingo apps is genuine and probably the #2 contributor to the site (the #1 being grellas) when it comes to start-up advice that actually works.
I used to think the Max Klein posts were somewhat inspirational, but at this point I just assume he's pulled a '419' on everyone.
There's a healthy dose of fiction mixed into whatever facts may be contained in his blog posts.
After reading this some time ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1353050 personally i don't care anymore, if some of what you write is fiction just put a disclaimer somewhere and go on writing. As for other blogs if the content is ok i'll read it, otherwise i'll use my time in some other way.
I must say it's very funny to read your reasons to move to China.
Among them, there's this one :
«There are so many little ‘unfreedoms’ in europe that seems insignificant, but together they add up to a society that advocates safety over freedom.»
Ok, but this is vague. Luckily, you provide an example, about a friend of yours :
«she went online to some review forum for such services and wrote a long and scathing review about the company. A few days later, she received a letter from a lawyer informing her she was being sued for defamation, and she should delete her review and pay the lawyer costs, which came to 600€.»
And this is the reason why you're moving to a country where people who criticize the government online end up in jail. (this guy, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Xiaoning)
Thank you for not letting us believe that this is a clever kind of joke, but is really the way you think.
Good luck, you're going to need an unusual amount of it...
Just because he's figured out how to spam Hacker News with his navel-gazing, amateurish blog posts does not mean you should listen to him. If he's too chicken to post under his real name and stand by what he has to say, then he's not someone I'm going to listen to. His posts are very trollish in nature. Stop giving him the attention he so craves and the traffic that is fueling his profits.
Update: Looks like "Max Klein" is voting this comment down using his numerous HN accounts. How pathetic.
Don't be hasty to criticize people - it may feel good in the short term, but over the long term it always turns out bad. And upvotes and downvotes really don't matter, you know.
Sorry this is (well, somewhat) totally off-topic, but:
Has anyone else noticed that the HN news items now show the sub-domain in select cases? Or has it always done this for 'popular' blogging platforms? Currently I can see this for Blogspot, Wordpress, Blogs.com and Posterous.
And, peripherally related, for this item as well. Which confuses me a little...
I believe you're slightly mistaken with your second line though - in this case it's showing the subdomain because the TLD is .in, and the 'www' bit is to just strip that particular bit from submitted links that might just be 'www.[blogspot|posterous|wordpress|blogs|etc].[in|jp|uk|za|etc]'.
[Further aside: I don't do much code any more, but it was fun to tickle that part of my brain! Thanks again!]
By blogging regularly, you invite people to pay attention to you. It seems natural then that you would want to carve out a private "don't look at me" space on the internet.
Most people don't have this problem, though, because most other people don't care about them. They don't need to carve out a private space on the internet because no one is paying attention anyway.
Personally, I share very little on Facebook because my Facebook social network is very close to my actual social network. My actual social network is quite varied, and there's little I have to say that is appropriate to every person I know.
I've seen this type thing before on the 'net and, to a lesser degree, been on the receiving end of it. Wondering if people would be willing to toss out their two cents worth concerning what signals "authenticity" to them and what signals "fake" to them in the online world (preferably without further trashing the individual in question, which is not a conversation I really want any part of). I can think of legitimate reasons for doing things like not posting photos on the 'net (and have, in fact, taken photos of me off the 'net to stop the influx of unwelcome, highly personal e-mails).
The "public" sphere is dead there is only the private sphere that is accessible by everyone. The notion of public is slowly eroding, see the death of print news media.
The best lie is a half truth.
"Max" the reason people read your articles is because you've said you make $40K a month from niche iphone apps.
Mark (lets drop the pretense) you sound like you have read Positioning by Ries, A. and Trout,J (http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/044...). Your positioning this "Max" character as the idealized serial entrepreneur. Globe trotting, living in 5 star hotel, identifying markets, working out those niche products. I'm sure that idealized person is something many people here want to replicate.
That's only half the story though isn't it? The reality is your $40K a month is made from these apps (http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/feather-moor-ltd/id3053457...) 1 star apps with content ripped from sites like ehow.com. Lets not forget that feather+moor are your creation as well.
Would people read 37signals in the same light if they actually made their money by running casino affiliate sites?
Would people read joel on software in the same light if he actually made his money from porn sites?
Would people read Paul Graham articles in the same light if he actually made his money selling teeth whitening ads?
You are not hiding your identity because of privacy, your hiding it because the reality of your success doesn't fit with the image you've created for Max.
"Max" is not real because he is only half the story.