I have to hand it to this guy, he has gotten his marketing company exposure on HN twice now in as many weeks, and his other accomplishments are quite notable. The thing that rubs me the wrong way about his articles is they always seem to be predicated on the notion that being really incredibly outgoing to the point of recklessness is the road to success. For example, this post should probably have been titled 'How to bum-rush the Russian Prime Minister and live to tell the tale'. The last one could have been 'How to screw over your competitors and an innocent event organizer to further your startup'.
He is very accomplished, but one wonders if there isn't a way to accomplish the same things without bending the rules so hard.
He's yet another Tim Ferris. Yes, you can further yourself by violating the rules of society around you and put furthering your own goals above anybody else's considerations.
We can argue all day if that's unethical or just "hacking the rules" - ultimately, it's a choice we all need to make on our own.
After emigrating to the U.S. as a teenager, he was virtually penniless when he returned to Prague in 1990 at the age of 27. Yet in just four years, armed with only an economics degree from Harvard and a short stint working at the London fund manager Robert Fleming, Kozeny transformed himself into one of his country's most celebrated fund managers, with a personal fortune estimated at $200 million.
While there are ethics involved in deciding whether or not to do things like these, they're actually not choices we all can make on our own, because, like with Tim Ferriss's model, the advice doesn't scale. It will only work for a relatively-few people, and for a limited time, before barriers are constructed.
Whats with the hate for Tim Ferris. I'm not a fan boy, but you have to admire his desire to try new things and then write about them. He may not be the most agreeable person, but when you have an environment that becomes incredibly ridged its kinda nice to see people like him out there. Even if their findings may not meet everyone's needs.
Also, given the quality of the article in proportion to the speed at which this article was upvoted, I'm not totally sure it wasn't manipulated in some fashion. Decent advice but not worthy of being #1.
If you look at the submitter's content, they comment very little, and they've posted almost exclusively spamming their blog posts and startup. It is a little bit suspicious.
I also suspect a voting ring and was surprised as well that this was the #2 article on HN. I skimmed over the sub-heads and it is full of meaningless platitudes. "Be proactive" "Be outgoing" "Dream big" ?
i am the author of this post. seriously voting ring? guys, the title of the article was "How To Meet Steve Wozniak and President" - that alone drove a ton of clicks, when people found it useful, they upvoted it! I can tell you that in a matter of 2 hours, we got around 50 votes, I suspect no more than 6 of them came from people that I know.
I doubt it's a coordinated effort. Most YC companies will fly to front page regardless of content because other YC founders (that obviously hang out on HN) want to see them succeed.
The net effect is the same but the motive is more noble. You could call it "home court advantage."
It's hard to be too upset by this. If I see a friend's startup on HN, I'm much more likely to upvote.
Well, the company (Virool) is a company that makes your content go viral, so if this is true it's almost like credentials for their company... although shady...
I find it a somewhat interesting contrast between the video where the Kairos society is marketed with big goals like solving the world's problems (e.g., health care is mentioned) in innovative ways, but then the actual companies often seem much less, eh, ambitious.
I think if there is a better way he would have done it. Path of least resistance right? In this case he is a complete stranger and has no social proof so he does what he has to do. Much props to him. Startup is a bitch and this guy gets it done.
You're confusing 'better' with 'least resistance'. Lots of heads of state have met with the Russian president. They did much more work to get to their position, so this is not the path of least resistance. But they likely had a more productive dialog, and they didn't violate any cultural norms. As someone else pointed out, people can only get away with this as long as they're taking advantage of everyone who doesn't act this way. If everyone was blindly self-interested, nothing would be accomplished, and society would devolve. But a few self-interested people can leverage the normalcy of those around them to accomplish things easily.
I have to give him some respect for getting into YC, but based on everything I've seen, I'm not sure exactly what he 'gets done'. Mostly it seems like bragging and social hacking all the way down.
I understand what you mean. It is a social hack but given his situation (aka he is not head of state) I m not sure if there is much else he could have done.
He is very accomplished, but one wonders if there isn't a way to accomplish the same things without bending the rules so hard.