What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

This sort of comment really annoys me.

First of all, the post is full of constructive, actionable advice. Does the advice seem good? Then that's all that matters! The post stands by itself even without knowing who patio11 is.

Personal attacks like this literally add nothing while at the same time actively stifling future discussions. You should never have a personal attack unless there is a very good, concrete reason for it to be relevant and you're still polite about it. Anything else is simply both rude and unconstructive.

Second of all, he's somebody who both has a successful business in a vaguely similar niche and used to be a successful consultant optimizing others businesses. That is, he was a professional doing exactly this sort of criticism! And people were paying him for it. Because it's extremely useful.

Nothing about my post is a personal attack.

I legitimately have no idea what business he has talking about tarsnap this way. I clicked his "about" link and it said he made bingo card creator software.

He has a ton of HN karma, so I expected downvotes, but I'm still puzzled as to why he would make this post.

You're saying he's had success in something similar to online backups? What was it?

That is exactly the point. Judge on his words, not on who he is.

FWIW, he is probably the most well-known CRO expert there has ever been. He has exactly the authority needed to write this post.

[edit: "CRO expert" is too strong, as noted below. I was thinking something "SaaSy". Basically, in this community, he is the expert in some forms of SaaS marketing/pricing.]

One of his other businesses sells an 'appointment reminder' service to businesses. It's wildly successful.

One could argue that perhaps that gives him some insight into the B2B sales process, which is a large content of the article.

I'm nobody in particular. Nobody ever anointed me the designated software sales and marketing consultant. I sort of fell backwards into consulting after the bingo card thing. My shtick was mostly "I make software companies money by applying engineering tactics to marketing goals."

I do not have a page specifically bragging about that partly because I hate bragging, partly because I hung up my consulting spurs last year, and partly because c.f. XKCD 125. Some of my clients are fairly well-known. Some of them are pretty technical. You have no particular reason to trust this representation, but "I've been involved in engagements which resulted in millions of dollars of improvement to businesses selling things approximately as technical as backup software" is a true statement.

Why I made this post? I wanted to help Colin out, I really enjoy making and selling software, and oh my goodness does that picodollar thing do it for me. Seriously, I have known my wife for less time than I have known the Tarsnap pricing strategy. Every year, like clockwork, it causes me to erupt volcanically. It is my Moby Dick. I will hunt it forever until it dies.

cperciva asked him to write it https://twitter.com/cperciva/status/451262554069663744

Just FYI for everybody here who might have a budding consultancy inside of them and is wondering if there still exists demand for it (YES!), there exist quite a few people who do CRO who a) are much better at it than I am, b) do quite well for themselves, and c) have, quite reasonably, never even heard my name.

If we add a lot of constrains like "Software! No wait, B2B software! For geeks!", for each constraint you add the pool of talent gets rather sharply smaller and my confidence that there exist lots of better options than me accordingly decreases.

It doesn't seem like you spent even an ounce of energy trying to understand who patio is and why the post might resonate with the HN audience. Downvoting warranted.

This is also how Ph.D.s work.