An odd thought – you may be doing yourself a disservice by posting this through your throwaway account.
If you are as well known as you say, your reputation might open some doors for you. Some people who like you but assume you're busy doing your thing may be excited to do some work with you that would solve your problem.
Moreover, relationships matter. So if you're a menschy guy, someone whose brother works at Rackspace, for example, might take this through a back channel on your behalf.
Pride is tough. Looking back on the last time I fell on tough times, my biggest mistake was not being more transparent about my situation to people who liked me. I felt weird and silly to be not successful, to have failed, but I ended up making things harder on myself.
I would hope that anyone who wants to help in this way would contact the person behind the throwaway account. If your excuse was "they used a throwaway account and therefore I won't help", I'd imagine you weren't going to help regardless.
I think the "excuse" if you could call it that is people have no idea who this is and have no way of contacting them.
Besides that, people choose who to work with based on reputation. I'm saying if this person has banked credibility with people over an extended period, he could probably pick up a few gigs from fellow HNers.
At this point, no one knows anything about this person, and so they have no idea what skills or other unique value to ask for or trade cash for.
Besides, you're much more likely to go out on a limb for someone you know is a good guy.
If you are as well known as you say, your reputation might open some doors for you. Some people who like you but assume you're busy doing your thing may be excited to do some work with you that would solve your problem.
Moreover, relationships matter. So if you're a menschy guy, someone whose brother works at Rackspace, for example, might take this through a back channel on your behalf.
Pride is tough. Looking back on the last time I fell on tough times, my biggest mistake was not being more transparent about my situation to people who liked me. I felt weird and silly to be not successful, to have failed, but I ended up making things harder on myself.