My business hero is my Dad. He left a secure job in Dublin to join a startup in Kilkenny in the early 1970’s. This wasn’t a tech startup, it was a dairy one, called Avonmore-Avongate. That team built a global business over the next few decades.

My most recent business hero is Pat Phelan. He overcame huge personal crisis to firstly build a great business locally and then build MaxRoam. What he has achieved with MaxRoam in those timescales is close to miraculous. Every chat with Pat consists of me going “no way?!” as he describes another major milestone.

Anyone doing a startup is going to have tons of criticism thrown at them. When I get reamed about LouderVoice by my peers, I value every word they say. The criticism is nearly always well-intentioned and I never take it personally.

However, when people who have never built anything in their lives, come along and throw insults around, making blanket criticisms of groups of companies or just make personal attacks, then that’s a different matter. These desperate attention-seekers have never done anything except comment on other people’s efforts. 

Robert Scoble, who used to be well-known as a Microsoft blogger, slagged off a ton of companies in his most recent link-baiting post. With his usual insight and depth, he said they sucked. I unsubbed from his blog over a year ago. Maybe if the rest of you do the same, he’ll learn some manners and show some respect.