I upvoted you for expressing a contrarian point of view and because I think posts should gravitate to 0 or 1 if they are not really rude.
If you've followed "The Patio11 Story" (soon to be a motion picture at a major Hollywood studio), I think one of the key things that sticks out is "Bingo Card Creator". The first time I read that, I thought "that's f'ing ridiculous". And then I read he was making money at it. But not millions or anything absurd, rather, a number that would not really be a respectable salary for a Bay Area based software guy, but just the same was something you could live off of in many places. I think that's what grabbed so many people's attention... this software business that was not "cool" (a Haskell-based file sharing social network!) or innovative (based on 5 years of graduate studies of network optimization algorithms!) or based on a brilliant hack, but on something that sounds, frankly, kind of silly, but opened a lot of people's eyes to the value of making stuff that helps out "regular people".
The story to that point really does engender a feeling of "well... ok, if he can sell bingo card stuff... maybe I can make something that makes money, even if it's not quite the next Facebook", which I think is something more people ought to explore, really. I get a very non-zero-sum-game feeling from BCC.
OTOH, the consulting stuff is based on patio11 being "internet famous", or at least famous in one corner of a part of the internet, and feels a lot more like something that is... not zero-sum (he provides real value, IMO), but more along the lines of "anyone can do it as long as they're internet famous or have some other significant advantage", which actually does exclude many of us, something that bingo cards manifestly do not.
I hope that was somewhat coherent and in no way construed as a slight to patio11, who deserves a lot of respect and gratitude for sharing a lot of ideas.
> this software business that was not "cool" or innovative or based on a brilliant hack, but on something that sounds, frankly, kind of silly, but opened a lot of people's eyes to the value of making stuff that helps out "regular people".
This is it right here. There are so many opportunities for software to help out so many industries, but everyone is so focused on the valley that they miss many, many, many businesses.
If you've followed "The Patio11 Story" (soon to be a motion picture at a major Hollywood studio), I think one of the key things that sticks out is "Bingo Card Creator". The first time I read that, I thought "that's f'ing ridiculous". And then I read he was making money at it. But not millions or anything absurd, rather, a number that would not really be a respectable salary for a Bay Area based software guy, but just the same was something you could live off of in many places. I think that's what grabbed so many people's attention... this software business that was not "cool" (a Haskell-based file sharing social network!) or innovative (based on 5 years of graduate studies of network optimization algorithms!) or based on a brilliant hack, but on something that sounds, frankly, kind of silly, but opened a lot of people's eyes to the value of making stuff that helps out "regular people".
The story to that point really does engender a feeling of "well... ok, if he can sell bingo card stuff... maybe I can make something that makes money, even if it's not quite the next Facebook", which I think is something more people ought to explore, really. I get a very non-zero-sum-game feeling from BCC.
OTOH, the consulting stuff is based on patio11 being "internet famous", or at least famous in one corner of a part of the internet, and feels a lot more like something that is... not zero-sum (he provides real value, IMO), but more along the lines of "anyone can do it as long as they're internet famous or have some other significant advantage", which actually does exclude many of us, something that bingo cards manifestly do not.
I hope that was somewhat coherent and in no way construed as a slight to patio11, who deserves a lot of respect and gratitude for sharing a lot of ideas.