https://www.forbes.com/pictures/mkg45effdk/eleni-antoniadou-...
I have no idea how she's in Forbes.
Social media has truly altered reality in a weird way.
Everyone involved are millionaires now and are permanently set for life. They're just going to spend their time now looking for the next narrative to fit and the next thing to take credit for, knowing nobody is going to fact check until they've done the cycle again.
If she would've had that on her resume over here, sheesh, that would not have looked good. Especially if she claimed that her work saved a patient's life.
I don't doubt that some genuinely notable people are mixed into this list, but it's impossible to take Forbes' word for any of them.
I've seen quite a few of these people in my area and they disgust me every time, coming from a "work is only valuable if it's hard" work-ethic family.
I just feel that the work I do should be all the "brand" I need to build. Yet everything around me points to the contrary.
My corporate brand is doing fine
It's sort of too bad, because these people don't provide the type of value that we respect. But they do ultimately provide value by connecting people, and for that they are rewarded.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/business/media/jeffrey-ep...
> The article on the Forbes website was attributed to Drew Hendricks, a contributing writer. As The Times revealed in an article last week, he was not the author of the piece. Instead, it was delivered to him by a public relations firm, and he said he was paid $600 to attach his byline and post it at Forbes.com.
> Mr. Hendricks said he had not been aware of Mr. Epstein’s history. “All I knew was, this is a guy doing a science thing,” he said. “If I had known otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it.”
pretty sure a good bit of his 'brand' was in profits from his 'side business' here as well..
If you need to get something difficult done, awards (other than academic) in my experience are a warning signal. People who are thinking about awards are always a problem.
2) Having access to highly coveted angel deals like Uber, or Twitter when they were just startups.
3) Getting paid for giving high-level fluffy advice in conferences.
4) Book deals.
That's it.
However, neither of them have made any progress on building an actual business. One of them has supposedly been developing the same simple product for almost 7 years now, but they’ve never been able to produce even a proof of concept prototype.
I thought I was missing something for the longest time, until I let go of the idea that they were really trying to build a company. They’re not. They’re building their personal brand, and succeeding wildly thanks to publications like the “30 under 30” list that have an insatiable appetite for underdog success stories.
Surely some of these companies are legitimately successful with great business models, but they’re mixed into these lists with the brand builders who know how to game the system. I’d be interested in reading an honest “Where are they now” follow up series that checks in with these founders at the 5-year mark after they make this list to see who the real successes are.