Lessons from Patrick McKenzie

Patrick McKenzie, known online as patio11, is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and writer who has shared a wealth of knowledge on software, business, and marketing. Over his career, he has become a respected voice in the tech and startup communities. [1] He is the founder of several software companies, including Bingo Card Creator and Appointment Reminder, and has worked at Stripe, where he contributed significantly to projects like Stripe Atlas. [1][2] His writings, primarily found on his blog Kalzumeus and his newsletter Bits about Money, offer pragmatic advice for engineers and entrepreneurs. [3][4]

On Pricing and Value

"Charge more." This is perhaps McKenzie's most famous piece of advice, urging businesses, especially in software, to increase their prices as they are often undervaluing their products and services. [5]
"Rates exert gravity. If you charge more, you'll spend your time talking to more sophisticated clients, working in better businesses, specializing in projects close to the money. These are compounding advantages. If you charge less, similar dynamics apply." [6]
"Coming into business from that mental schema you think, 'Charging a customer $20 is a lot of money. Asking for $25 an hour is a lot of money.'... That is absolutely not the way businesses think about things." [5]
"Engineers are hired to create business value, not to program things." This quote emphasizes that the ultimate goal of a software engineer in a business context is to contribute to the bottom line. [7]
"You are not defined by your chosen software stack." McKenzie encourages engineers to focus on the value they create rather than the specific technologies they use. [7]

On Marketing and Sales

"I'm a much better engineer than virtually all marketers and I'm a much better marketer than virtually all engineers. Tactically abusing this combination prints money in a very intellectually interesting way." [8]
"Engineering Your Way To Marketing Success." This is a recurring theme in his work, encouraging engineers to apply their problem-solving skills to marketing challenges. [3]
"Build an audience with 30-day email courses." McKenzie has referred to this strategy as a "cheat code to life" for building a targeted mailing list. [9]
"Always add a 'Powered by [add your company here]'." This is a simple yet effective way to get free advertising, especially in B2B2C models. [9]
"Get on people's Podcasts." He advocates for guest appearances on relevant podcasts as an effective way to reach a new audience. [9]
"Blogging as personal marketing." McKenzie is a testament to the power of consistent writing and sharing knowledge to build a personal brand and attract opportunities. [3]
"The importance of always giving the user prominent options which advance them towards conversion." This is a key principle in his advice on landing page design and user experience. [3]
"Write the book before the software." This suggests validating an idea and building an audience through content before investing heavily in product development. [10]

On Career and Skills

"[E]very great developer you know got there by solving problems they were unqualified to solve until they actually did it." This quote encourages taking on challenges beyond one's current skill set as a path to growth. [7]
"Communication is a skill. Practice it: you will get better." He stresses the importance of communication skills for career advancement, especially for technical professionals. [7]
"Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice." This is the title of one of his most popular essays, which advises engineers on how to position themselves for career growth. [3]
"You want to be attached to Profit Centers because it will bring you higher wages, more respect, and greater opportunities for everything of value to you." This is a crucial piece of advice for navigating corporate structures. [7]
"Modesty is not a career-enhancing character trait." McKenzie advises professionals to be confident and articulate about their accomplishments. [7]
"Choose Work with Autonomy and Agency." He values roles that offer the freedom to make meaningful decisions, leading to greater job satisfaction and personal growth. [11]
"Use Games as Learning Tools." He points to games like Factorio as effective tools for developing systems thinking and problem-solving skills applicable to the real world. [11][12]
"The intersection of solid marketing skills and engineer skills is the sweet spot." He believes this combination unlocks immense potential for entrepreneurs. [5]

On Business and Entrepreneurship

"If you want a problem solved make it someone's project. If you want it managed make it someone's job." [6]
"Most software is not sold in boxes... Most software is boring one-off applications in corporations, under-girding every imaginable facet of the global economy." This highlights the vast, often unseen, market for software beyond consumer-facing apps. [7]
"The activation energy required to start a business remains higher than necessary." This was a key motivation behind his work on Stripe Atlas, which aims to simplify the process of starting an internet business. [13][14]
"You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to drive the business forward, but no one is going to tell you what that is." This speaks to the self-directed nature of entrepreneurship. [5]
"There's no magic connection between how many hours you put in and results." McKenzie emphasizes working smart over simply working long hours. [5]
"An hour saved is an hour earned." He advocates for efficiency and outsourcing tasks that are not core to one's business. [5]
"Always under promise and over deliver." A classic piece of advice that McKenzie has demonstrated the value of throughout his career. [5]
"Every product created and lesson learned will reap compounding advantages over time." [5]
"The biggest thing people don't appreciate about large companies is the basic productive unit isn't an individual it is an engineering team with about ~8 members." [15]
"A great deal of the values that I've created by writing over the years is not breaking new ground on humanity's understanding of things, but taking things that are well understood in particular places and exporting them to places where they are less well understood." [11]

On Writing and Content Creation

"Even if you have literally zero people who read what you write today, it is still worth writing that thing today because you will produce an asset that you can use in the future in one-on-one conversations." [10]
"The company's total available corpus is massive. What does that do for us?" Speaking about Stripe, he highlights the internal and external value of a company's written knowledge base. [10]
"I've had relatively few new ideas with regards to marketing over the course of my career... Most of the other stuff has been things that have been well well-known in the marketing community but the marketing community and the engineering community don't talk all that much." [10]
"Put your blog in a subdirectory of the product domain." A specific, actionable piece of SEO advice he has shared. [3]
"I have not written for my personal newsletter in a few years. I recently started Bits about Money, a new weekly newsletter about the intersection of tech and finance." This demonstrates his ongoing commitment to sharing knowledge through writing. [16]

On Life and Perspective

"Work is something that allows us to live, not life is something that allows us to work." A core value for McKenzie, emphasizing work/life balance. [5]
"Seek Balance and Prioritize Family." His sabbatical reflects his effort to align his career with his life stage. [11]
"It's ok to adjust priorities as life changes." [11]
"You can adopt part of the script at a particular phase in your life without needing to necessarily consider that as the only live script available for you over the course of your entire working career." [11]
"At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career." [7]
"I realized that I had made more money sleeping, in the five hours, than I had made in the 19 hours working at the day job before—counting my overtime." This was his "aha" moment before quitting his job to work for himself. [5]
"I feel more fulfilled when I'm helping out other software entrepreneurs." [5]
"Complex Systems Make the World Go 'Round." He stresses that many inefficiencies are the result of deliberate cost-control decisions and trade-offs, not incompetence. [11]
"I think a lot of gap between people who “get” LLMs and people who don't is that some people understand current capabilities to be a floor and some people understand them to be either a ceiling or close enough to a ceiling." [17]
"I cannot overstate enough the productivity improvement good processes or a particularly good working relationship can represent, even for people who are highly productive." [6]
"Informed scrappiness is his favorite approach." This describes his methodology of balancing existing knowledge with exploration and experimentation. [5]
"He is always learning—balancing out 80% of previously-gathered knowledge with 20% of exploration and trial." [5]
"Try, fail, learn from your failures, and try again." A simple yet powerful mantra for perseverance. [5]
"Networking and Generosity with Boundaries." While known for his willingness to mentor, he has refined his approach to manage his commitments and prioritize his personal goals and family. [11]

Patrick McKenzie's insights continue to be a valuable resource for anyone navigating the intersection of technology and business. His "greatest hits" on his blog, Kalzumeus, serve as a comprehensive starting point for those looking to delve deeper into his work. [3]

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