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Comment by Armstrongdr

13 days ago

I love almost everything they have done, I would highly recommend looking a little deeper.

Can you provide some links? Because I see that Eric Ries has a resume on Wikipedia that mainly highlights his book, "The Lean Startup." I see that he was adjacent to some dot-com-bubble-era startups. I see he has a handsome photo. I don't see where he actually founded a successful startup; if anything, reading his resume makes me think he stopped coding and discovered a more successful career in selling promises to young people that his methodologies would turn them into successful entrepreneurs. To me, that does sound like a grift. I mean, why bother doing the actual work of starting a startup, coding and solving lots of problems, when you can present yourself as a guru in how startups work, right? Smart. Also, shady.

Apparently he also runs a stock exchange with two companies on it. And a lot of "core principles". Lol. Speaking as someone who coded and ran the first Bitcoin casino and was around a lot of early crypto bullshit in the nascent years of BTC when lots of dudes like this had crazy plans to commoditize it all sorts of ways, this is juvenile boiler room stuff that would have been laughed out of the Bitcoin Business Association Skype chat in 2010. (And yes, dread pirate roberts was there for a sec, and the general level of dialog was a far sight more intelligent than this dreck).

I got hell-banned here for criticizing PG for running this very site basically to achieve the same grift - to form a cult of young people who'd worship him in exchange for pie in the sky promises that they would become successful startup founders. But to be fair, PG has both actual experience and a ton of investment capital to prove it, so his cult followers have at least some chance of receiving an investment (or a gift, if you think kissing his ass is the essential requirement) that will catapult them into another echelon.

These guys are just living the mantra of "fake it til you make it." This reminds me of the $500 I spent when I turned 21 to take a bartending class for two weeks. Loads of fun. End result: There was one job on their board for graduees, for a bar that had been closed for a couple years. Turned out the best way to become a bartender was to learn on the job.

Turned out that was also the best way to become a software engineer.