The story of Timothy Dexter

[lylemckeany]

>In the second edition Dexter added an extra page which consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks. Dexter instructed readers to "peper and solt it as they plese".

...zero f*cks given.

[terhechte]

My mom had this saying from her grandfather which was something like "While a smart guy still contemplates an opportunity, the simple one has already gone there and seized it". Oftentimes because he never thinks about the danger of his action, he just does.

[bhz]

I think my favorite part is the ASCII art from 1798: http://books.google.com/books?id=uboNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA36#v=...

(Yes, ASCII wasn't around in 1798.)

[ChristianMarks]

My takeaway from this is that brains are superfluous in business and may even be a hindrance. Actually a bimodal distribution with Dexter on one end and Bezos on the other is more likely to be beneficial.

[K2h]

...And for him, timing was everything. That is my take away.

[peter_l_downs]

What a great story! I have no idea how this is relevant to HN but I found it hilarious.

[swalsh]

It really is just a great story... but deep down I think there's some good business lessons here.

Luck matters, but deep down I think his luckiest break was having a great boat captain. The guy found profit in the most unlikeliest of places by improvising.

[SteveGuttenberg]

Curious

[roymabookie]

what a LAD