This guy's a joke. His novelty is wearing off fast. His startup advice is stale and it seems like he's tryig too hard to build up his Internet persona.
That seems harsh. This post wasn't that great, but his others were pretty good. He's certainly working at building his online persona, but there's nothing wrong with that. Though with the mention of making "30k a month", I'm beginning to worry that his story might be fabricated for the sake of publicity. Regardless, I look forward to seeing more writing from Max.
i didn't find any insights that were unique to West African kidnappers; the same comparisons could be made to any risky enterprise with an intense and tightly-knit team.
did anyone else find that article a bit creepy to read? i'm afraid of the slippery slope where people continue to push more and more absurd yet uninsightful analogies. i'm sure someone could've written a similar article entitled "What Silicon Valley startups can learn from Nazi commanders" and made those same points.
Re-echoing what someone above said, the analogy in the article is quite stale, without bearing fresh insight in relation to startups. It tries too much to cash in on tabloid like sensationalism ''Kidnappers'' while pretending to educate its readers. It is also wordy. There are a few writers on here who try to share insightful messages in fewer words (Sivers etc.,) and they are modest about the attention they get. Focusing the readers' attention on the amount of shareware money one earns is the equivalent of cyber bling: very suspect.
I've said it before and I'll say it again about his posts. I'm highly skeptical that the anecdote held much truth. His stuff would be a lot more interesting if he cut about 50% of each article.