Well, aren't we a feisty bucket of crabs. (patio11 brought up this metaphor - and it's perfect.)
People, if you're here on HN, you spend a lot of time devoted to reading about the importance of confidence. That it's the entrepreneur's stock in trade. Hell, maybe you even write your own blog posts about the importance of confidence & post them here, hoping for attention.
But what do you do when the chips are down and you come across somebody who truly embodies them? Clatter your claws and try to pull them back in:
"HA HA" "Oh so he's like Brad Pitt now?" "Wow, 2 app store hits, whatever" "Hope he likes having no clients!" "I would never hire him" "DOUCHE!" "What a jerk" "I'm gonna judge him just by this essay and assume that he has none of the actual qualifications or experience he mentions"
The power of belief-action congruity at work. Or not.
If you want to be successful, and you believe having confidence is part of that, then you better figure out of your words and your deeds line up. Because if they don't, you are never going to get what _you_ want.
Now, I've never charged $1k/hr... but almost. And if you return true business value, that is totally a reasonable number. Remember - it's all about the value returned. That's another HN belief, isn't it?
When I returned to consulting after two years in traditional employment, after many years of lackluster freelancing, I raised my rates from $80 to $200 to $250 to $300 to $400 and beyond. My last project came damn close to $1k/hr after all said & done.
And you know what? My clients loved it. They kept coming back for more. They loved my work and thought the prices were reasonable, because there's nobody out there doing what I do in that price point.
(My only true competition in that space was Stamen - a mid-sized agency compared to little old me and my husband, an intimate 2-person team. Who competes with Mike Lee on what he offers in that blog post?)
I would keep raising my rates and I would have started talking about it, too, except that I don't want to consult any more. The more you charge, the more people need you, the harder it is to say no to projects that promise to put a quick $40k in your pocket.
The moral of the story is: most freelancers are lazy, unprofessional, with their interests completely divided, and have little to no real-life experience to back up their years spent coding in the basement. They undercharge, take on too much, and then produce merely mediocre work. They have no true value proposition other than a body that types the special arcane symbols, and asks the client the occasional question. They have no connections.
Believe it or not, there are many companies out there who will gladly pay for an experience that is entirely the opposite of that.