The bottom line is you can only optimize so much via a/b testing and whatnot from marginal ideas at best.
Happiness is different things for different people. Don't be condescending if you do not understand another person's way of life.
Further, patio11 is one of the few programmers to have written extensively on how to become a good salesman. To say that he doesn't understand why it's not winning in the market is extremely condescending to someone who specifically writes a public post to address this.
Also, he made $4,000 an hour on BCC, so it seems like he's left with a lot! And even so, business come and go all the time. Doing nothing on BCC as it fades from $60k a year to $0 over the course of a decade while doing minimal work on it for the last half of that decade doesn't sound like a bad idea to me at all. Sounds like 'free' money.
(He could do more, but he doesn't have to, which is a great place to be).
'cperciva likes how the business is.
He's making a lot more than $60,000 currently. Also he is running his own business/monetary life and that is something very few great entrepreneurs can still say these days. Hard to put a price on that, especially since he acknowledges he values the freedom of not being tied to investors in this very post.
Also he owns Appointment Reminder and he didn't count the appreciation of that asset. Lets assume the total profit for AR went from 100k to 135k. Now lets make the assumption that it is valued at a 5x multiple, this means that he increased his net worth by 175k. Thus his total "profits" for the year would be under estimated by 175k.
2007 $6,200 / 100 hours / $60/hour
2008 $10,700 / ?? hours /
2009 $18,525 / 130 hours / $125~$150/hour
2010 $25,904 / 115 hours / $200~250/hour
2011 $25,000 / 35 hours / $700/hour
2012 $38,598 / 38 hours / $1,000/hour
2013 $23,000 / 23 hours / $1,000/hour
2014 $20,000 / 5 hours / $4,000/hour
Rough total is $170,000 from 550 hours of effort. Lets assume it ticks over for a few more years. You've basically earnt quarter of a million from equivalent of 3 or 4 months effort.
What's the value of being able to devote tomorrow to reading a Phyiscs (or whatever) book if you don't feel like going in to work? Or going out to a movie?
What's the value of being able to pick your kid up from daycare no-hassle when they run a fever?
What's the value of never ever having to dress some way you don't want to, to travel at times that annoy you, etc.?
When you're an employee, or a tightly-scheduled professional, or in a high-velocity startup, you give up all of these things. Sometimes it's worth it, but often it's not.
That isn't just worth much more than however much your average BigCorp Developer is making... that's priceless.
That said, the freedom to choose whatever city you like to live in, is priceless.