Hey Thomas, are you listening here?

In all seriousness, the picodollars do an excellent job of attracting exactly the sort of customers I want... and turning away the customers I don't want. They were originally part joke and part a way to avoid arguments with customers who don't understand that 1 GB < 1 GiB, but now it's way more than that.

in spite of the recommendations and 'support' provided by Patrick and others

Don't be too harsh on Patrick. His vision for Tarsnap is not my vision for Tarsnap, but he has helped me to orient myself: The projection of "business" onto the subspace "geek" doesn't look very much like "business", but it's not the same as "kid right out of university who has never had a real job" either, and that's what you would see if I hadn't had advice (from Patrick, Thomas, various YC people, and the rest of HN).

Advice can be very valuable even if you don't follow it to the letter.