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How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

465 points by nish1500 6y ago

Simulacra 6y ago
I think some would call the various vaporware concepts out there a ponzi scheme for tech people.
aerovistae 6y ago
What a fantastic blog post. It's nice to occasionally see someone calling out all the bullshit.
psanford 6y ago
This reminds me of a killer new startup I'm thinking of investing in. They sold me on it as soon as I heard their elevator pitch: International Stamp Arbitrage.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
Seen so much of this bullshit while travelling around SE Asia. I swear 90% of nomads are dropshipping/life coaches running ponzi schemes, and the other 10% are geeks like me who lucked into remote-friendly coding gigs. Sprinkled with some truly fascinating folks who genuinely discovered some new and interesting way of making this work for them.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  I'd say 95% of digital nomads are just online marketers who market their own lifestyle so that they can sell a course on how to imitate them. And obviously, their customers will imitate them and sell a course on how to imitate them. And so the cycle continues.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    I've fantasised about the vanlife, living the nomad lifestyle out of a van. When looking for build inspiration videos on YouTube, I ended up seeing a lot of vanlife "influencers", but what I notice is many videos just have a few thousand views, which is surely not enough to make a living..
    - ryanar 6y ago
      I also fantasized about vanlife. Eamon & Bec is an awesome channel if you want to learn about that sort of thing. They certainly grew their channel enough to be comfortable.
      - seppin 6y ago
        vanlife, digital nomad, etc. It's all the same. You are only presented with the highs, not the lows.
    - fxtentacle 6y ago
      Most influencers can't make a living. There's so many of them that it's a buyer's market. When I was still selling naughty bikinis online, I did a few promotions with Instagram yoga teachers and I was always surprised by how low their asking prices were. I guess most of them valued having any success to show for it much higher than being paid a livable wage.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      It's a meme, man. I did the van thing for a year while working in Australia on the NBN (big fibre optic project). Drove around and spliced and oversaw fibre projects. It gets old pretty fast, has tons of hidden costs, and looks quaint and romantic to people who've never had to do it. Fun for a year, but I probably would have paid almost as much just booking into hostels or AirBnB's and renting a car on occasion. I was able to go and see some cool places -- but breaking down in remote South Australia was scary and frustrating. And you get really, really tired of the lack of space. What made it tolerable was being able to get out of the van and chill in places like the library or a coffee shop-- likely all no-gos in the COVID era
  - peteretep 6y ago
    > I'd say 95% of digital nomads are just online marketers It’s strange ‘cuz I’ve been working in digital nomad hotspots for years and have met very very few people like that. Lots of translators, programmers, and then a complete mishmash of other people, but very few people selling courses, and the ones who _were_ selling courses generally nothing to do with being a digital nomad
    - moltar 6y ago
      Same here. I’ve been nomading for ten years. I haven’t met a single person who was not legit doing something of value. The closest I came to one was an online poker player in Chiang Mai back in 2010. Maybe we just hang out in the “right” circles? It’s probably just like in real life. I have never met anyone offering me a generic (non nomad) Ponzi scheme. But I sure had several legit investment opportunities thru my circles.
      - seppin 6y ago
        > I’ve been nomading for ten years. The most i've ever been able to do was half a year. How can you choose to be without a real home that long?
        peteretep 6y ago
        > How can you choose to be without a real home that long? Depends what you mean by "real home" I guess. I have a tiny apartment in Bangkok, where we would normally spend ~ 8 weeks a year in total a year, and then we rent ad-hoc or stay with family the rest
        seppin 6y ago
        Ah ok you are married. Do you have long term friends locally ? Is your wife your anchor to a local community ?
        peteretep 6y ago
- mssundaram 6y ago
  Dropshipping someone a life coach, now there's an idea
  - arthur-st 6y ago
    Really postmodernist take on mail-order brides.
- anm89 6y ago
  Yeah, my running joke while living in Thailand was that it was a circular pyramid scheme, the yoga teachers are buying life coaching, the life coaches are all learning to become drop shippers, and the drop shippers are all getting training to become yoga teachers. They just buy and sell services from each other in a circle trying to grow their own thing until they give up and go home.
  - zdbrandon 6y ago
    That’s a microcosm of how a real economy works, actually.
  - jmcqk6 6y ago
    I'm just a layperson, but it seems like you've described an economy. Especially when you realize that >buy and sell services from each other in a circle isn't true at all. I don't know anything dropshipping - the name certain implies something scammy, but our economy is full of things like that. It's a weird aspect of society - which lies are we all going to agree to accept - and since each person answers those questions differently, it leads to a lot of tension.
    - anm89 6y ago
      I get what both of the comments are saying here, but this is really nothing like how a real economy works. None of these people are solving any of the core needs of any of these other people (food, clothes, transportation, housing, any physical goods at all) and very little new money is entering this system at all, maybe some on the drop shipping side but that can also be a net loss in some cases. So yes this represents an economy but the denizens of that economy would be impoverished and miserable, constantly waiting for some outsider to come solve their problems. This is seen in the fact that most people do this as long as their pre existing savings can sustain it because they are doing it at a loss and then they give up when they have eaten through their existing wealth. So yeah, i don't think it's much of a profound insight to point out the similarities to other economies just because of the existence of people engaging in trade with each other. The quality of the trade is the issue, not its existence.
- kilroy123 6y ago
  Can confirm. I was a lucky geek nomad who worked remotely. I had a regular software developer job just like I would if I was "back home".
dvt 6y ago
This article is fantastic. I think "get rich quick" schemes are so much worse when it comes to my generation and beyond (millennials/gen-z). People have been endlessly screwed over: graduated college during the 2008 economic bust, lived with parents until their 30s, fired/laid off during the 2020 pandemic -- so I fundamentally understand the mirage of Instagram fame and endless sacks of money for doing basically nothing of value. For a classic example, just look at /r/wallstreetbets -- young people are frustrated because there's no end to this tunnel. It also makes things harder for those of us that don't want to run Ponzi schemes: How does one break out when everyone's taking glamorous selfies in Thailand but I'm working in a dingy apartment trying to build the next big app? It's a tough situation on all sides with no obvious solutions.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  > For a classic example, just look at /r/wallstreetbets -- young people are frustrated because there's no end to this tunnel That's a bad example. By many measures retail investors have outperformed institutional investors since March. The simple reason is that options have a built in exit strategy, the thing that's missing when most people lose in scams - including Ponzi schemes! On the flip side, why then do they outperform? High risk, high reward. Opportunities where you lose your entire principle, like out of the money options, turned out to be wildly underpriced, simply because institutions never buy them. Anyway, I get it, those people are stupid. But they made money.
  - dvt 6y ago
    > That's a bad example I don't think it's a bad example, because if you spend some time on that subreddit, you'll quickly realize people are literally gambling with their life savings. In no small part due to disillusionment and cynicism with the current economic realities -- we can no longer work at a stable company, marry a pretty wife, have a couple of kids, retire 40 years later, and live off of a plump 401k.
    - v64 6y ago
      > you'll quickly realize people are literally gambling with their life savings Gambling, yes. But the stock market is not a ponzi scheme.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Many blog posts pontificating some advice read like: "How to double your money gambling everything on a coin toss" Sure, you can win a coin toss, but unless you can reproduce that experiment consistently it's not a viable advice. And that pretty much to everything... if a process is not better than random chance then it's worthless.
- mch82 6y ago
  > if a process is not better than random chance then it's worthless Nice distillation of what many might dismiss as common sense.
fxtentacle 6y ago
Brilliant :) And don't forget to look at the signup link for the "How to Run a Ponzi Scheme" Master course. That said, don't all the cool kids call it "Mastermind" these days?
m3nu 6y ago
I found that the road to success is very different for everyone and for all circumstances. It can't be taught because everyone has different skills and is in a different situation. Only very general tools can be taught. Even if person X is successful and writes down every step, it will be very hard for anyone to repeat it.
woahAcademia 6y ago
I think one of the biggest issues is that tech people are "know it alls". They make lots of money, they must be smart right? So when a friend disagrees the person doesn't consider it. And unlike their Engineering counterparts they won't search for proof. If you need to see real world examples, look at who buys brand name. It's telling.
- escape_goat 6y ago
  I think we all remember which group of people green-lit Soylent.
  - seppin 6y ago
    They can code, yet many remain painfully ignorant about people and the world.
  - opportune 6y ago
    Soylent is actually not a bad idea IMO, and it kind of spawned a small industry of competitors (e.g. Huel), the problem there is that entrepreneurs have a tendency to make products that only appeal to other people in their techy/"product"/entrepreneurial bubble isolated to a small number of US cities. And I say that as someone who really likes Coffiest (or whatever they call it know)
- strken 6y ago
  Tech people are pretty smart, on average. It's a somewhat demanding professional career. There's a hell of a lot of difference between "smart" and "infallible".
  - woahAcademia 6y ago
    My limited understanding of the brain is that programmers are able to put the pieces together by combining their memories and short term memory. But that's drastically different than Engineering where calculations are done methodically.
  - Taylor_OD 6y ago
dx87 6y ago
The "nomad" posts always bugged me, especially when it's someone traveling around the world by working odd jobs and relying on the kindness of strangers. They're always presented in a way to make you feel bad about having a steady 9-5 working for "the man" when you could be seeing the world and being free. They conveniently leave out the fact that their lifestyle is completely dependent on the majority of people working steady jobs, and if everyone was a nomad like them, they'd have no picturesque villages to visit, roads to hitchhike on, or restaurants willing to give you food in exchange for washing some dishes.
- esoterica 6y ago
  I think being a digital nomad implies working a remote job that's not tied to your location? If you work odd jobs you're just a regular nomad.
  - joijoiwejrr 6y ago
    This is correct.
- slow_donkey 6y ago
  Isn't this true of any job - If the world was all software engineers it'd be missing lots of stuff too. I get the point you're making about nomads being (more) dependent on others, but I honestly think that's true for everyone now.
ForHackernews 6y ago
This is a pretty good checklist, but it really needs more blockchainz.
- ladyanita22 6y ago
  Yeah, no reference to crypto and blockchain? This article didn't cover the most worrying ponzi scheme I've seen since public pension plans.
  - bob33212 6y ago
    blockchain is more like a Pump and Dump scam. You can run it just once. Ponzi schemes require several iterations of the scam to be successful.
    - ladyanita22 6y ago
      You say that because you haven't heard of the latest crypto investment form. You put $140 at least 6 month in a new cryptocurrency deposit. In exchange, you get paid every tuesday during this time, you also get sent a red visa card and a premium Spotify account (you never have to pirate again!). Plus, if you're referred, you and your referrer will get $25 dollars free. Now, when I asked where did that money come from, the guy on Twitch told me "it's like a bank, the money comes from you". The difference here is, of course, this gives you much, much higher returns than a bank while a bank can actually invest your money, and this "entity" cannot. Also the interface of some of these "investment" agencies look like a game, I guess to be more attractive [1]. In the end, the idea is always the same: crypto will only go up. So far that's been the case, though. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjI5hTcU0AAnUO0.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjI5hTcU0AAnUO0.png
jingjingbing 6y ago
In India We have Ponzi Schemes Run By Tech People who claim to teach programming to kids Its called White Hat Junior https://www.whitehatjr.com/ https://www.whitehatjr.com/
ggm 6y ago
The denouement is You didn’t read anything, did you? No, you will actually get 500 new followers, and actually make $5,000. The ones who won’t are the suckers who buy your course. Sucker being the operative word. (also, its satire, the real denouement is his last guidance: "make things of value, don't seek money, seek problems of high value to solve")
asimjalis 6y ago
I love this. For v2 you need to add a crypto angle.
renewiltord 6y ago
This is what people think is a ponzi scheme for tech people. In fact it's actually a Ponzi scheme for all the same suspects as last time. i.e. the same guy who gets into Amway or the pyramid marketing schemes falls into this. Tech people don't fall into these Ponzi schemes. They fall into a different variety where a serial entrepreneur who has repeatedly received funding is assumed to be more capable than a guy new to the game.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I disagree, many tech people lap this kind of thing up because it makes them believe that starting a highly profitable side-project is easy. The VC dream is for an entirely different segment of tech people than those wanting to be indie hackers.
spamizbad 6y ago
This is pure hustle. Love it.
giantg2 6y ago
I thought this was going to be an article about working at a tech company. How they sell you the idea of a career of fulfilling and noble work. Then the people at the top (who got in early) make all the money on the fruits of your labor. All while you can't get a promotion even though you're doing the job above you (no future).
04148565 6y ago
Legit question: is [1] an instance of this kind of scheme? The guy came out of nowhere boasting how he left his $500K job at amazon and whatnot (first red flag for me) and I've seen his content popup pretty often. 1: https://gumroad.com/l/aws-good-parts https://gumroad.com/l/aws-good-parts
- philipkiely 6y ago
  I know Daniel, his work is not a ponzi scheme. Because you asked this question in good faith, I'll give you a summary in good faith: 1. The book you linked is just technical content. It teaches you how to use AWS, not how to sell books about using AWS. 2. Unlike the tongue-in-cheek examples of the original post based on minimal success, this book is written based on years of professional experience as a developer building AWS. 3. His content pops up pretty often because people like it. Of course, if the book was part of a ponzi scheme, then part of that scheme would be having people like me defend it on HN :)
  - koluna 6y ago
    And yet, this is the same guy that peddles a “here’s how to become Twitter famous” course[0]. If you check the testimonials of those who have achieved success, it’s exactly as the article describes. Someone going from 100 to 150 followers going “OMG ITS WORKING!” [0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1263160316277350400?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1263160316277350...
    - cercatrova 6y ago
      I've bought and implemented the strategies in that course. I mean, it does work, at least for those who put the effort in.
- koluna 6y ago
  100% is - see a comment I made in this thread further down. From what I can tell, this is the guy that doesn’t seem to have any substance short of talking platitudes on Twitter about life philosophy, how he quit his cushy job, and how we all need to pursue our dreams. Oh, and buy his book and Twitter audience growth course.
tauwauwau 6y ago
Kurosagi, a Manga about a black (Kuro) swindler (Sagi) swindling other Swindlers. It has covers a lot of schemes. https://mangakakalot.com/read-iw9hn158504903371 https://mangakakalot.com/read-iw9hn158504903371
nickhodge 6y ago
Easier. Step 1. Invent Bitcoin.
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  Back then when bitcoin is still in its infancy, there is not much to do with bitcoin in your wallet apart from gifting each other some coins (bitcoin faucet was pretty generous back then). So people on bitcointalk forum often openly running some ponzi scheme and a lot of people would join just for the heck of it. There was nothing shady about it as the organizer would openly admit its a ponzi scheme (something along "hey, I'm running a new ponzi scheme here. If you're interested here is the url").
  - Kiro 6y ago
    No idea why you're getting downvoted. It's completely true and I participated in a few. The excitement was that you knew it could blow up at any time so it was like gambling. When you got your profits you often sent it back to the scheme. It was a classic chicken race where you wanted to pull out just before it crashed.
bleepblorp 6y ago
Cryptocurrency is the ponzi scheme for tech people. Because the cryptocurrency ecosystem does not do investment -- likely in very large part because no one can buy anything legal with cryptocurrency -- returns for coiners who cash out must, by definition, come from later investments. Paying earlier investors with the investments of those who follow is the definition of a ponzi scheme.
louwrentius 6y ago
I expected an article about Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency but I was disappointed in that regard. Cool article though.
- conductr 6y ago
  TBH I knew when I bought BTC at ~$10 that tech people were the first adopters and if it broke out from the tech crowd it would be like being near the top of the pyramid. It's precisely why I bought.
  - louwrentius 6y ago
    Good for you. But Bitcoin is nothing. It now has value because a lot of people - having a stake in it - artificially created demand with bullshit stories.
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
I would argue that the ponzi scheme is much broader than what is described here. 1) Try to start an online business. It doesn't really matter what you're doing or if it succeeds as long as it's marketable to people aspiring to create an online business 2) Make a big fuss about the launch on all social platforms (Twitter, HN, PH, IH, your blog, etc) and hope someone with a big audience signal boosts you or you get lucky 3a) If you start making money, awesome! Constantly post revenue numbers, things about Building in Public (TM) and "you can do it too!". Your audience (And therefore revenue) will compound exponentially 3b) If you 'fail', make a blog post retrospective called "Lessons Learned" and blast that out everywhere as well 4) Repeat steps 1-3 until you hit 3a. Throw in a few "6 Months of Building in Public" type posts if you're really having trouble In reality, I strongly believe that very few people end up making it through this type of process and success mostly comes down to luck or connections (Anyone who already has an audience can easily pull you up).
- herval 6y ago
  How is that a Ponzi Scheme? Self-promoting and narrative-building to make it sound easy, but if you’re building something that someone will pay you money for, you’re literally just building a business...?
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    Slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it's a ponzi scheme when they start selling courses on "how to become an entrepreneur".
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
      I know a kid who ended up doing that for his comp sci "internship." I feel so bad for the guy but he really didn't even learn how to code so it's frankly all on him.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    Yes, you are. As the article says, you are actually making money and gaining followers. It's not a ponzi scheme in the literal sense, but these businesses are built off the back of other people who believe they can do what you're doing supporting you (In the article this is by paying for your course). Some of them will go on to create their own successful businesses (And perpetuate the cycle), but most will most likely fail. There was a post on Indie Hackers not long ago about a guy who said he lost thousands of dollars trying to build a business. I'm sure there are many more people who got into similar situations.
DVassallo 6y ago
I'm cited in the comments as an instance of this scheme [1]. If you want to see how I make it all work, check out my interview on Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/177-daniel-vassallo https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/177-daniel-vassallo [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25249523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25249523
paxys 6y ago
The only people who made money during the gold rush were the ones selling pickaxes and shovels.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Won’t people call me out when they buy my course and fail to become rich? This should gets it's own article. So many products and services totally unremarkable but survive simply because they've managed to peddle a brand image whereby it is fashionable to talk them up and unfashionable to say "I blew a bunch of money on them and the results were crap".
noobermin 6y ago
It's kind of weird to read this meta sarcastic article yet see that their journal is full of...articles of the type they critique...?
solresol 6y ago
Isn't there a bigger Ponzi scheme in tech? The one where you sell a product at a screaming loss, double your revenue each year (without ever showing a profit), and then each year raise capital at double the previous year's valuation to fund the ever-growing loss-making sales. It's just the suckers in that scheme are the investors...
- justnotworthit 6y ago
  This is what I thought the article would be about: You get to be startup-rich not by convincing people to buy your product, but by convincing investors that people will buy your product. That's a much different sell, and you can ride it multiple times for a long time, getting rich without ever making a sustainable product. Your product, essentially, was selling hope (later turned to regret) to investors.
  - thinkingemote 6y ago
    Investors don't have regret when that happens, they count on it. They spread their bets across many small startups. It only needs one investment to succeed and the other dozen or so can fail. Most startups will and are expected to fail. It's part of the game that you need to convince investors that you still have a chance in being the unicorn.
jasonkester 6y ago
While there are indeed lots of people doing this sort of thing, I notice people being accused of it who are in fact successful and are giving out actionable advice. (They're easy to spot if you look, because they don't ask you to buy their course). Imagine, for example, that you had stumbled across a Magic Formula to create a niche Software as a Service business that brings in $5,000/month while only taking up 10 hours of your time each week. Why would you give that formula away when you could just use it yourself over and over and become a zillionaire? Well, let's think about it. Assuming you do have that Magic Formula and have used it once, what are your options? 1. Go live on the beach in Thailand. Forever. 2. Build another business that brings in $5,000/month for 10hrs/week effort. Notice that each spin of the Magic Formula cuts another 10 hours/week out of your schedule of growing your hair and hanging out with that blonde girl from the article. Spin it 4 times and you're back to having a full time job like the rest of the world. So you don't do that. You hang out on the beach, wondering why more people don't do what you're doing. And you from time to time try to nudge a few more people into doing so themselves. At least that's my take on it, having spun that formula twice.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Have you written about the magic formula? Care to share?
  - jasonkester 6y ago
    Yes. A bit. Check out my comment history here for more detail but mostly it’s this: Work remote contracts to fund yourself while building a saas business targetting real problems that companies will spend money on. Repeat as necessary until you hit a niche that works. My first success was on try number six or so. The second was half a dozen tries later. Good luck!
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      It's basically what I'm doing however I have steered clear of B2B as I suspect the 10 hours a week will be hard to stick to once I have paying customers who have support requirements. How do you contain expectations in that regard?
christiansakai 6y ago
Example 4: Create a blockchain/Crypto. I welcome the downvotes, come at me. Make it negative.
cranium 6y ago
If you want to eyewitness an even tighter Ponzi scheme loop, look at YouTubers in the trading industry. Boats of them sell a course/book and use YouTube for marketing & ad money. Bonus points if they advertise beating the market.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  My college roommate followed this one guy and even bought his courses. He claimed he's made double his money since paying for his "insider trading tips" or whatever. My roommate claimed he was a self made millionaire. I looked the guy up, he's just a college dropout whose parents owned a very successful real estate agency to which he was placed in. He then got absurd amounts of capital from the commissions only people like his parents could get. My roommate believed this guy knew the ticket to wealth but all I saw was basically the xkcd comic of "but lottery tickets! It works!"
maeln 6y ago
I don't know if it is the same for everyone, but here in France, YouTube advertisement have been just that since the coronavirus began. Almost all advertisement is young people posing with expensive car (probably rented) trying to sell you their seminar/conference. It has become so shameless that they even try to sell course on "how to dropship properly". Its scamming all the way down. I find the one trying to sell dropshipping course very funny because it is really scammer trying to scam other scammer.
l1am0 6y ago
I think this one of the best content marketing posts I have seen in a long time. Funny and the call to action in the end is so subtile :D The fake sign up form is build with https://formcrafts.com/ https://formcrafts.com/ the product Nishant is working on.
monkzero 6y ago
One of the best articles I read on hacker news
brauhaus 6y ago
My hypothesis is that all the Tech People turned into Ponzi schemes (er, sorry, info products) after trying showing their tech products here on HN and getting roasted in the comments.
blackd0g 6y ago
This probably made me laugh more than it should. Good job.
heintzsight 6y ago
I almost feel bad for this guy. I believe he deserves everything he's got coming his way, good or bad. It's a repulsive and idiotic article written by someone who is naive, arrogant and presumptive on life and how to make it in the world. I do admire the hustle and ingenuity, but what is ambition but a form of love and hope? The entire article had a meticulously cynical view on business and his customers. I think the idea of responsibility is shocking to the author, who obviously has never experienced something meaningful. He's a fraud and he knows it. Humans find meaning by helping other humans. The article is perverse and I really wish the author go back to wherever trash hole he came from. The western world does not need this kind of parasitic thinking.
- namdnay 6y ago
  Hmmmm... you realise it's satire, right?

465 points by nish1500 6y ago

Simulacra 6y ago

I think some would call the various vaporware concepts out there a ponzi scheme for tech people.

aerovistae 6y ago

What a fantastic blog post. It's nice to occasionally see someone calling out all the bullshit.

psanford 6y ago

This reminds me of a killer new startup I'm thinking of investing in. They sold me on it as soon as I heard their elevator pitch: International Stamp Arbitrage.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

Seen so much of this bullshit while travelling around SE Asia. I swear 90% of nomads are dropshipping/life coaches running ponzi schemes, and the other 10% are geeks like me who lucked into remote-friendly coding gigs. Sprinkled with some truly fascinating folks who genuinely discovered some new and interesting way of making this work for them.

fxtentacle 6y ago
I'd say 95% of digital nomads are just online marketers who market their own lifestyle so that they can sell a course on how to imitate them. And obviously, their customers will imitate them and sell a course on how to imitate them. And so the cycle continues.
- netsharc 6y ago
  I've fantasised about the vanlife, living the nomad lifestyle out of a van. When looking for build inspiration videos on YouTube, I ended up seeing a lot of vanlife "influencers", but what I notice is many videos just have a few thousand views, which is surely not enough to make a living..
  - ryanar 6y ago
    I also fantasized about vanlife. Eamon & Bec is an awesome channel if you want to learn about that sort of thing. They certainly grew their channel enough to be comfortable.
    - seppin 6y ago
      vanlife, digital nomad, etc. It's all the same. You are only presented with the highs, not the lows.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    Most influencers can't make a living. There's so many of them that it's a buyer's market. When I was still selling naughty bikinis online, I did a few promotions with Instagram yoga teachers and I was always surprised by how low their asking prices were. I guess most of them valued having any success to show for it much higher than being paid a livable wage.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    It's a meme, man. I did the van thing for a year while working in Australia on the NBN (big fibre optic project). Drove around and spliced and oversaw fibre projects. It gets old pretty fast, has tons of hidden costs, and looks quaint and romantic to people who've never had to do it. Fun for a year, but I probably would have paid almost as much just booking into hostels or AirBnB's and renting a car on occasion. I was able to go and see some cool places -- but breaking down in remote South Australia was scary and frustrating. And you get really, really tired of the lack of space. What made it tolerable was being able to get out of the van and chill in places like the library or a coffee shop-- likely all no-gos in the COVID era
- peteretep 6y ago
  > I'd say 95% of digital nomads are just online marketers It’s strange ‘cuz I’ve been working in digital nomad hotspots for years and have met very very few people like that. Lots of translators, programmers, and then a complete mishmash of other people, but very few people selling courses, and the ones who _were_ selling courses generally nothing to do with being a digital nomad
  - moltar 6y ago
    Same here. I’ve been nomading for ten years. I haven’t met a single person who was not legit doing something of value. The closest I came to one was an online poker player in Chiang Mai back in 2010. Maybe we just hang out in the “right” circles? It’s probably just like in real life. I have never met anyone offering me a generic (non nomad) Ponzi scheme. But I sure had several legit investment opportunities thru my circles.
    - seppin 6y ago
      > I’ve been nomading for ten years. The most i've ever been able to do was half a year. How can you choose to be without a real home that long?
      - peteretep 6y ago
        > How can you choose to be without a real home that long? Depends what you mean by "real home" I guess. I have a tiny apartment in Bangkok, where we would normally spend ~ 8 weeks a year in total a year, and then we rent ad-hoc or stay with family the rest
        seppin 6y ago
        Ah ok you are married. Do you have long term friends locally ? Is your wife your anchor to a local community ?
        peteretep 6y ago
mssundaram 6y ago
Dropshipping someone a life coach, now there's an idea
- arthur-st 6y ago
  Really postmodernist take on mail-order brides.
anm89 6y ago
Yeah, my running joke while living in Thailand was that it was a circular pyramid scheme, the yoga teachers are buying life coaching, the life coaches are all learning to become drop shippers, and the drop shippers are all getting training to become yoga teachers. They just buy and sell services from each other in a circle trying to grow their own thing until they give up and go home.
- zdbrandon 6y ago
  That’s a microcosm of how a real economy works, actually.
- jmcqk6 6y ago
  I'm just a layperson, but it seems like you've described an economy. Especially when you realize that >buy and sell services from each other in a circle isn't true at all. I don't know anything dropshipping - the name certain implies something scammy, but our economy is full of things like that. It's a weird aspect of society - which lies are we all going to agree to accept - and since each person answers those questions differently, it leads to a lot of tension.
  - anm89 6y ago
    I get what both of the comments are saying here, but this is really nothing like how a real economy works. None of these people are solving any of the core needs of any of these other people (food, clothes, transportation, housing, any physical goods at all) and very little new money is entering this system at all, maybe some on the drop shipping side but that can also be a net loss in some cases. So yes this represents an economy but the denizens of that economy would be impoverished and miserable, constantly waiting for some outsider to come solve their problems. This is seen in the fact that most people do this as long as their pre existing savings can sustain it because they are doing it at a loss and then they give up when they have eaten through their existing wealth. So yeah, i don't think it's much of a profound insight to point out the similarities to other economies just because of the existence of people engaging in trade with each other. The quality of the trade is the issue, not its existence.
kilroy123 6y ago
Can confirm. I was a lucky geek nomad who worked remotely. I had a regular software developer job just like I would if I was "back home".

dvt 6y ago

This article is fantastic. I think "get rich quick" schemes are so much worse when it comes to my generation and beyond (millennials/gen-z). People have been endlessly screwed over: graduated college during the 2008 economic bust, lived with parents until their 30s, fired/laid off during the 2020 pandemic -- so I fundamentally understand the mirage of Instagram fame and endless sacks of money for doing basically nothing of value. For a classic example, just look at /r/wallstreetbets -- young people are frustrated because there's no end to this tunnel. It also makes things harder for those of us that don't want to run Ponzi schemes: How does one break out when everyone's taking glamorous selfies in Thailand but I'm working in a dingy apartment trying to build the next big app? It's a tough situation on all sides with no obvious solutions.

an_opabinia 6y ago
> For a classic example, just look at /r/wallstreetbets -- young people are frustrated because there's no end to this tunnel That's a bad example. By many measures retail investors have outperformed institutional investors since March. The simple reason is that options have a built in exit strategy, the thing that's missing when most people lose in scams - including Ponzi schemes! On the flip side, why then do they outperform? High risk, high reward. Opportunities where you lose your entire principle, like out of the money options, turned out to be wildly underpriced, simply because institutions never buy them. Anyway, I get it, those people are stupid. But they made money.
- dvt 6y ago
  > That's a bad example I don't think it's a bad example, because if you spend some time on that subreddit, you'll quickly realize people are literally gambling with their life savings. In no small part due to disillusionment and cynicism with the current economic realities -- we can no longer work at a stable company, marry a pretty wife, have a couple of kids, retire 40 years later, and live off of a plump 401k.
  - v64 6y ago
    > you'll quickly realize people are literally gambling with their life savings Gambling, yes. But the stock market is not a ponzi scheme.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Many blog posts pontificating some advice read like: "How to double your money gambling everything on a coin toss" Sure, you can win a coin toss, but unless you can reproduce that experiment consistently it's not a viable advice. And that pretty much to everything... if a process is not better than random chance then it's worthless.

mch82 6y ago
> if a process is not better than random chance then it's worthless Nice distillation of what many might dismiss as common sense.

fxtentacle 6y ago

Brilliant :) And don't forget to look at the signup link for the "How to Run a Ponzi Scheme" Master course. That said, don't all the cool kids call it "Mastermind" these days?

m3nu 6y ago

I found that the road to success is very different for everyone and for all circumstances. It can't be taught because everyone has different skills and is in a different situation. Only very general tools can be taught. Even if person X is successful and writes down every step, it will be very hard for anyone to repeat it.

woahAcademia 6y ago

I think one of the biggest issues is that tech people are "know it alls". They make lots of money, they must be smart right? So when a friend disagrees the person doesn't consider it. And unlike their Engineering counterparts they won't search for proof. If you need to see real world examples, look at who buys brand name. It's telling.

escape_goat 6y ago
I think we all remember which group of people green-lit Soylent.
- seppin 6y ago
  They can code, yet many remain painfully ignorant about people and the world.
- opportune 6y ago
  Soylent is actually not a bad idea IMO, and it kind of spawned a small industry of competitors (e.g. Huel), the problem there is that entrepreneurs have a tendency to make products that only appeal to other people in their techy/"product"/entrepreneurial bubble isolated to a small number of US cities. And I say that as someone who really likes Coffiest (or whatever they call it know)
strken 6y ago
Tech people are pretty smart, on average. It's a somewhat demanding professional career. There's a hell of a lot of difference between "smart" and "infallible".
- woahAcademia 6y ago
  My limited understanding of the brain is that programmers are able to put the pieces together by combining their memories and short term memory. But that's drastically different than Engineering where calculations are done methodically.
- Taylor_OD 6y ago

dx87 6y ago

The "nomad" posts always bugged me, especially when it's someone traveling around the world by working odd jobs and relying on the kindness of strangers. They're always presented in a way to make you feel bad about having a steady 9-5 working for "the man" when you could be seeing the world and being free. They conveniently leave out the fact that their lifestyle is completely dependent on the majority of people working steady jobs, and if everyone was a nomad like them, they'd have no picturesque villages to visit, roads to hitchhike on, or restaurants willing to give you food in exchange for washing some dishes.

esoterica 6y ago
I think being a digital nomad implies working a remote job that's not tied to your location? If you work odd jobs you're just a regular nomad.
- joijoiwejrr 6y ago
  This is correct.
slow_donkey 6y ago
Isn't this true of any job - If the world was all software engineers it'd be missing lots of stuff too. I get the point you're making about nomads being (more) dependent on others, but I honestly think that's true for everyone now.

ForHackernews 6y ago

This is a pretty good checklist, but it really needs more blockchainz.

ladyanita22 6y ago
Yeah, no reference to crypto and blockchain? This article didn't cover the most worrying ponzi scheme I've seen since public pension plans.
- bob33212 6y ago
  blockchain is more like a Pump and Dump scam. You can run it just once. Ponzi schemes require several iterations of the scam to be successful.
  - ladyanita22 6y ago
    You say that because you haven't heard of the latest crypto investment form. You put $140 at least 6 month in a new cryptocurrency deposit. In exchange, you get paid every tuesday during this time, you also get sent a red visa card and a premium Spotify account (you never have to pirate again!). Plus, if you're referred, you and your referrer will get $25 dollars free. Now, when I asked where did that money come from, the guy on Twitch told me "it's like a bank, the money comes from you". The difference here is, of course, this gives you much, much higher returns than a bank while a bank can actually invest your money, and this "entity" cannot. Also the interface of some of these "investment" agencies look like a game, I guess to be more attractive [1]. In the end, the idea is always the same: crypto will only go up. So far that's been the case, though. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjI5hTcU0AAnUO0.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjI5hTcU0AAnUO0.png

jingjingbing 6y ago

In India We have Ponzi Schemes Run By Tech People who claim to teach programming to kids Its called White Hat Junior https://www.whitehatjr.com/ https://www.whitehatjr.com/

ggm 6y ago

The denouement is You didn’t read anything, did you? No, you will actually get 500 new followers, and actually make $5,000. The ones who won’t are the suckers who buy your course. Sucker being the operative word. (also, its satire, the real denouement is his last guidance: "make things of value, don't seek money, seek problems of high value to solve")

asimjalis 6y ago

I love this. For v2 you need to add a crypto angle.

renewiltord 6y ago

This is what people think is a ponzi scheme for tech people. In fact it's actually a Ponzi scheme for all the same suspects as last time. i.e. the same guy who gets into Amway or the pyramid marketing schemes falls into this. Tech people don't fall into these Ponzi schemes. They fall into a different variety where a serial entrepreneur who has repeatedly received funding is assumed to be more capable than a guy new to the game.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
I disagree, many tech people lap this kind of thing up because it makes them believe that starting a highly profitable side-project is easy. The VC dream is for an entirely different segment of tech people than those wanting to be indie hackers.

spamizbad 6y ago

This is pure hustle. Love it.

giantg2 6y ago

I thought this was going to be an article about working at a tech company. How they sell you the idea of a career of fulfilling and noble work. Then the people at the top (who got in early) make all the money on the fruits of your labor. All while you can't get a promotion even though you're doing the job above you (no future).

04148565 6y ago

Legit question: is [1] an instance of this kind of scheme? The guy came out of nowhere boasting how he left his $500K job at amazon and whatnot (first red flag for me) and I've seen his content popup pretty often. 1: https://gumroad.com/l/aws-good-parts https://gumroad.com/l/aws-good-parts

philipkiely 6y ago
I know Daniel, his work is not a ponzi scheme. Because you asked this question in good faith, I'll give you a summary in good faith: 1. The book you linked is just technical content. It teaches you how to use AWS, not how to sell books about using AWS. 2. Unlike the tongue-in-cheek examples of the original post based on minimal success, this book is written based on years of professional experience as a developer building AWS. 3. His content pops up pretty often because people like it. Of course, if the book was part of a ponzi scheme, then part of that scheme would be having people like me defend it on HN :)
- koluna 6y ago
  And yet, this is the same guy that peddles a “here’s how to become Twitter famous” course[0]. If you check the testimonials of those who have achieved success, it’s exactly as the article describes. Someone going from 100 to 150 followers going “OMG ITS WORKING!” [0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1263160316277350400?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1263160316277350...
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    I've bought and implemented the strategies in that course. I mean, it does work, at least for those who put the effort in.
koluna 6y ago
100% is - see a comment I made in this thread further down. From what I can tell, this is the guy that doesn’t seem to have any substance short of talking platitudes on Twitter about life philosophy, how he quit his cushy job, and how we all need to pursue our dreams. Oh, and buy his book and Twitter audience growth course.

tauwauwau 6y ago

Kurosagi, a Manga about a black (Kuro) swindler (Sagi) swindling other Swindlers. It has covers a lot of schemes. https://mangakakalot.com/read-iw9hn158504903371 https://mangakakalot.com/read-iw9hn158504903371

nickhodge 6y ago

Easier. Step 1. Invent Bitcoin.

neurostimulant 6y ago
Back then when bitcoin is still in its infancy, there is not much to do with bitcoin in your wallet apart from gifting each other some coins (bitcoin faucet was pretty generous back then). So people on bitcointalk forum often openly running some ponzi scheme and a lot of people would join just for the heck of it. There was nothing shady about it as the organizer would openly admit its a ponzi scheme (something along "hey, I'm running a new ponzi scheme here. If you're interested here is the url").
- Kiro 6y ago
  No idea why you're getting downvoted. It's completely true and I participated in a few. The excitement was that you knew it could blow up at any time so it was like gambling. When you got your profits you often sent it back to the scheme. It was a classic chicken race where you wanted to pull out just before it crashed.

bleepblorp 6y ago

Cryptocurrency is the ponzi scheme for tech people. Because the cryptocurrency ecosystem does not do investment -- likely in very large part because no one can buy anything legal with cryptocurrency -- returns for coiners who cash out must, by definition, come from later investments. Paying earlier investors with the investments of those who follow is the definition of a ponzi scheme.

louwrentius 6y ago

I expected an article about Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency but I was disappointed in that regard. Cool article though.

conductr 6y ago
TBH I knew when I bought BTC at ~$10 that tech people were the first adopters and if it broke out from the tech crowd it would be like being near the top of the pyramid. It's precisely why I bought.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Good for you. But Bitcoin is nothing. It now has value because a lot of people - having a stake in it - artificially created demand with bullshit stories.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

I would argue that the ponzi scheme is much broader than what is described here. 1) Try to start an online business. It doesn't really matter what you're doing or if it succeeds as long as it's marketable to people aspiring to create an online business 2) Make a big fuss about the launch on all social platforms (Twitter, HN, PH, IH, your blog, etc) and hope someone with a big audience signal boosts you or you get lucky 3a) If you start making money, awesome! Constantly post revenue numbers, things about Building in Public (TM) and "you can do it too!". Your audience (And therefore revenue) will compound exponentially 3b) If you 'fail', make a blog post retrospective called "Lessons Learned" and blast that out everywhere as well 4) Repeat steps 1-3 until you hit 3a. Throw in a few "6 Months of Building in Public" type posts if you're really having trouble In reality, I strongly believe that very few people end up making it through this type of process and success mostly comes down to luck or connections (Anyone who already has an audience can easily pull you up).

herval 6y ago
How is that a Ponzi Scheme? Self-promoting and narrative-building to make it sound easy, but if you’re building something that someone will pay you money for, you’re literally just building a business...?
- nmfisher 6y ago
  Slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it's a ponzi scheme when they start selling courses on "how to become an entrepreneur".
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    I know a kid who ended up doing that for his comp sci "internship." I feel so bad for the guy but he really didn't even learn how to code so it's frankly all on him.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  Yes, you are. As the article says, you are actually making money and gaining followers. It's not a ponzi scheme in the literal sense, but these businesses are built off the back of other people who believe they can do what you're doing supporting you (In the article this is by paying for your course). Some of them will go on to create their own successful businesses (And perpetuate the cycle), but most will most likely fail. There was a post on Indie Hackers not long ago about a guy who said he lost thousands of dollars trying to build a business. I'm sure there are many more people who got into similar situations.

DVassallo 6y ago

I'm cited in the comments as an instance of this scheme [1]. If you want to see how I make it all work, check out my interview on Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/177-daniel-vassallo https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/177-daniel-vassallo [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25249523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25249523

paxys 6y ago

The only people who made money during the gold rush were the ones selling pickaxes and shovels.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>Won’t people call me out when they buy my course and fail to become rich? This should gets it's own article. So many products and services totally unremarkable but survive simply because they've managed to peddle a brand image whereby it is fashionable to talk them up and unfashionable to say "I blew a bunch of money on them and the results were crap".

noobermin 6y ago

It's kind of weird to read this meta sarcastic article yet see that their journal is full of...articles of the type they critique...?

solresol 6y ago

Isn't there a bigger Ponzi scheme in tech? The one where you sell a product at a screaming loss, double your revenue each year (without ever showing a profit), and then each year raise capital at double the previous year's valuation to fund the ever-growing loss-making sales. It's just the suckers in that scheme are the investors...

justnotworthit 6y ago
This is what I thought the article would be about: You get to be startup-rich not by convincing people to buy your product, but by convincing investors that people will buy your product. That's a much different sell, and you can ride it multiple times for a long time, getting rich without ever making a sustainable product. Your product, essentially, was selling hope (later turned to regret) to investors.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Investors don't have regret when that happens, they count on it. They spread their bets across many small startups. It only needs one investment to succeed and the other dozen or so can fail. Most startups will and are expected to fail. It's part of the game that you need to convince investors that you still have a chance in being the unicorn.

jasonkester 6y ago

While there are indeed lots of people doing this sort of thing, I notice people being accused of it who are in fact successful and are giving out actionable advice. (They're easy to spot if you look, because they don't ask you to buy their course). Imagine, for example, that you had stumbled across a Magic Formula to create a niche Software as a Service business that brings in $5,000/month while only taking up 10 hours of your time each week. Why would you give that formula away when you could just use it yourself over and over and become a zillionaire? Well, let's think about it. Assuming you do have that Magic Formula and have used it once, what are your options? 1. Go live on the beach in Thailand. Forever. 2. Build another business that brings in $5,000/month for 10hrs/week effort. Notice that each spin of the Magic Formula cuts another 10 hours/week out of your schedule of growing your hair and hanging out with that blonde girl from the article. Spin it 4 times and you're back to having a full time job like the rest of the world. So you don't do that. You hang out on the beach, wondering why more people don't do what you're doing. And you from time to time try to nudge a few more people into doing so themselves. At least that's my take on it, having spun that formula twice.

rorykoehler 6y ago
Have you written about the magic formula? Care to share?
- jasonkester 6y ago
  Yes. A bit. Check out my comment history here for more detail but mostly it’s this: Work remote contracts to fund yourself while building a saas business targetting real problems that companies will spend money on. Repeat as necessary until you hit a niche that works. My first success was on try number six or so. The second was half a dozen tries later. Good luck!
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    It's basically what I'm doing however I have steered clear of B2B as I suspect the 10 hours a week will be hard to stick to once I have paying customers who have support requirements. How do you contain expectations in that regard?

christiansakai 6y ago

Example 4: Create a blockchain/Crypto. I welcome the downvotes, come at me. Make it negative.

cranium 6y ago

If you want to eyewitness an even tighter Ponzi scheme loop, look at YouTubers in the trading industry. Boats of them sell a course/book and use YouTube for marketing & ad money. Bonus points if they advertise beating the market.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
My college roommate followed this one guy and even bought his courses. He claimed he's made double his money since paying for his "insider trading tips" or whatever. My roommate claimed he was a self made millionaire. I looked the guy up, he's just a college dropout whose parents owned a very successful real estate agency to which he was placed in. He then got absurd amounts of capital from the commissions only people like his parents could get. My roommate believed this guy knew the ticket to wealth but all I saw was basically the xkcd comic of "but lottery tickets! It works!"

maeln 6y ago

I don't know if it is the same for everyone, but here in France, YouTube advertisement have been just that since the coronavirus began. Almost all advertisement is young people posing with expensive car (probably rented) trying to sell you their seminar/conference. It has become so shameless that they even try to sell course on "how to dropship properly". Its scamming all the way down. I find the one trying to sell dropshipping course very funny because it is really scammer trying to scam other scammer.

l1am0 6y ago

I think this one of the best content marketing posts I have seen in a long time. Funny and the call to action in the end is so subtile :D The fake sign up form is build with https://formcrafts.com/ https://formcrafts.com/ the product Nishant is working on.

monkzero 6y ago

One of the best articles I read on hacker news

brauhaus 6y ago

My hypothesis is that all the Tech People turned into Ponzi schemes (er, sorry, info products) after trying showing their tech products here on HN and getting roasted in the comments.

blackd0g 6y ago

This probably made me laugh more than it should. Good job.

heintzsight 6y ago

I almost feel bad for this guy. I believe he deserves everything he's got coming his way, good or bad. It's a repulsive and idiotic article written by someone who is naive, arrogant and presumptive on life and how to make it in the world. I do admire the hustle and ingenuity, but what is ambition but a form of love and hope? The entire article had a meticulously cynical view on business and his customers. I think the idea of responsibility is shocking to the author, who obviously has never experienced something meaningful. He's a fraud and he knows it. Humans find meaning by helping other humans. The article is perverse and I really wish the author go back to wherever trash hole he came from. The western world does not need this kind of parasitic thinking.

namdnay 6y ago
Hmmmm... you realise it's satire, right?