When we grow up, we look up to heroes. Whether it's Greek myths, Japanese animes or American superheroes, they take us on a journey. They show us a path of resisting the call to adventure, taking risks, facing temporary failure and eventually succeeding.
This mirrors something in our psychology and the challenges that come with starting a new venture. (Something Joseph Campbell covered at length in The Hero with a Thousand Faces).
I look at some Internet personalities the same way. They've paved the way and provide inspiration to an entire generation.
- Pieter Levels. On top of being the poster child for one-file PHP projects worth millions, Pieter has fun building his one-man startups in public on Twitter. The OG of indie hackers!
- Adam Wathan. Manages to rock both code and UI. Creator of Tailwind CSS – honestly the only piece of tech I don't curse at – and the excellent Refactoring UI.
- Eben Pagan. Pick-up guru turned Internet marketer and productivity expert – a path common to a lot of ambitious young men.
- Joel Spolsky. Co-founder of BOTH StackOverflow and Trello!
People I need to look into:
- Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft. I need to look into the story of how big he grew Minecraft on his own, before hiring, and before selling it for $2.5B.