What an amazing track record from Joel Spolsky: Launched Fog Creek, then StackOverflow, Trello and now Glitch (which I think is the successor of Fog Creek)
Fog Creek renamed to Glitch as we transitioned from being a bootstrapped product-incubation lifestyle company to a single-product VC-backed startup. I think of the Fog Creek storybook closing with that rename, since Glitch always had a very different business focus, but technically (and perhaps culturally) they're of the same lineage.
In other Joel track record exploits, he's also our co-founder over at HASH.ai [1] and a driving force behind the Block Protocol [2][3]
hash.ai and the "block protocol" sound like crypto shams. Nice to see something different, although I feel like the branding really, really makes it seem like crypto.
I know this is wrong, but I also think patio11 is somewhat a product of the Business of Software forum (that in many ways is a precursor to this place) so extremely indirectly I credit Joel with still seeing Patrick on my timeline regularly.
Feel free to upgrade that to a very, very direct influence. In 2010 after I quit being a salaryman I wanted nothing other than to go into semi-retirement on Bingo Card Creator (“sip iced cocoa and play video games all day”).
A long-ranging conversation with Joel on, among other things, confluence of Catholic theology and the Talmud plus the memorable phrase “Shouldn’t you apply your skills to something which isn’t totally bullshit?” caused me to have a sharp reassessment of life and career goals, but for which it is unlikely I would have made a serious go of my consultancy, successfully launched my following few companies, or continued writing at anything like pace observed over the interval.
and Patrick, I can say that you were the first heavy influence on me that pushed me in the direction of solo entrepreneurship. From your writings and podcast I found Brennan Dunn, Amy Hoy, Jonathan Stark, Philip Morgan and others who have inspired me to choose and pursue my own path. Thanks for all that you’ve done, and I aspire to leave the kind of mark on the world that you have left.
