HN Explorer

Ask HN: What did your 'Show HN' project turn into?

382 points by chezmo ↗ HN
This weekend I waded through a couple of old projects and I thought about all the stuff I built over the years. I posted a couple of "Show HN" projects a couple of years ago and it was funny reading those posts again.

Basically all of the projects went on 'auto-pilot' right away, meaning that I didn't touch them since I posted them. However, my latest 'Show-HN' turned into a real business and three years later we are a three people remote team and we are growing quite fast (the project is called mailparser.io).

I was wondering what your 'Show HN' turned into? Any stories you want to share?

285 comments

[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] thread
gtheme_io
Few years ago I posted HN for my site project and now turn into ramen profitable side project[0].

I stop working on the project for 1+ years and now I plan to put more time to improve it (i.e. HTTPS) in the next few months.

Traffic to the side is dropping and I plan to post some contents to generate traffic as well.

[0]: http://www.gtheme.io/

docsapp_io
Recently I launched my side project[0] via HN. However seem like not much interest on the project.

Merely 2-3 people sign up and no activity after sign up. I dont know what to do with it and now I am not motivated to improve it. :(

[0]: https://www.docsapp.io/

realusername
Just some small feedback but since it's for developers, you might want to add authentication via Github accounts.
jordanwallwork
It might be an idea to add that there's a free tier to the Plans & Pricing section, rather than just in the FAQ. That might give an indication of what to expect from the free trial as that isn't clear.

I think you could make better use of the demo too by scrapping the placeholder text and instead using it as a 'how to' guide for the platform itself - not only would this be useful in itself for your customers, but it'd help show off what it can do. I tend to prefer demos that show the product in a real-life situation as it helps me more in understanding how I might be able to get value from it.

Also I actually find the "No Credit Card Required" a bit scary (although that could just be me) - perhaps something more like "Get Started For Free"?

nceruchalu
In June we showed Volleyy (https://volleyy.com), a tool for responsive newsletters. Got us to the front page of product hunt, and a sizeable boost in our active user base. We are still working on growing :-)
jasonkester
I actually first found HN in my weblogs nine years ago, when this guy called "pg" posted a link to a post-mortem I wrote up of Twiddla's accidental launch:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14389

I actually spent today working on a new document viewer for Twiddla. It has been relatively successful, with tons of happy users, but still isn't bringing in the same sort of revenue as my other bill-paying product.

Edit: Here's the "last week" link that somebody mentioned on that thread. That must have actually been the one I found in my logs (since I responded to it):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872

nojvek
When this guy called "pg". When I first joined HN, I always wondered, who is this "pg". Then I read hackers and painters. O_O when I made the connection.
geerlingguy
Server Check.in was posted about 4 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4901350) and is still running a profit (about 1 hour of my time per month maybe, and it gets around $2k ARR, $1k profit), though it never took off in a major way.

I'm working on a detailed 4-year summary post, which I'll post on HN soon. One of the offshoots of my work on the project, Ansible for DevOps, did (and continues to do) much better, revenue-wise!

sideproject
About 2 years ago, I posted my side project HelloBox (http://hellobox.co).

Back then, I started as a tool that lets you create your own HackerNews clone. I did this, because every now and then, I was seeing Show HN posts that went like "HackerNews for XYZ". So I thought, I'll create a tool that lets you build your own HN quickly!.

Two years later, I'm still going and it's now grown into a community tool. Still not at the level that I want, but slowly getting there and hopefully monetize it soon.

jaflo
Looks pretty cool! Did you launch with the feature set you have right now or did it grow as you gained users?
sideproject
Oh no. The launched version was... very basic. Originally it was "create your own HN" tool, then I realised I was essentially building a community building tool - surprise, surprise - and that's when various ideas for the features came about. Still long way to go! But we are eating our own dog food by using HelloBox ourselves! This is our Q&A page, built on HelloBox itself - http://self.hellobox.co
netheril96
I wrote a filesystem in userspace (FUSE) with authenticated authentication for self use (https://github.com/netheril96/securefs).

It got a modest number of stars now, but few from HN (mostly from Reddit, judging by how upvoted the post is).

bemmu
Almost exactly 5 years ago I posted about a Japanese candy subscription service (https://www.candyjapan.com/), and it is now doing roughly ~$200k in yearly revenue.

Lately I've been toying with the idea of selling the business, as it seems like half a decade is plenty enough to spend on a single project and I'm curious to see what else I might be able to do. But I periodically get into this mood and might soon come to my senses again :-)

lucaspottersky
wow... 5 years already... i remember this! and so far i haven't done anything with my life hahahaha :sad:
enraged_camel
>>wow... 5 years already...

Hah, my thoughts exactly! Time flies...

biztos
I too remember this, though not from HN... and I remember thinking, "wow, what a glorious and probably doomed project!"

Glad to hear it's doing well.

przeor
Definitely, you should start accepting BitCoin. I have some of $ it in my mobile wallet and probably I would order some ;-D while I've got an impulse to try a japan's candy ;-)
joshschreuder
From memory there was problems with fraud for regular credit card transactions for Candy Japan, so I wonder if Bitcoin would be even worse in this regard.
yitchelle
Man, has it been 5years already! I remember reading it when it was ShowHNed. And the book you wrote about it. Hope you had some success with the book as well.
downandout
I cannot believe it's been 5 years. I remember reading about this like it was yesterday. Congratulations on the success!
jay-anderson
Happy former customers here. We had to cancel since we live in Phoenix and received melted candy during the summer months (not your fault) and we forgot to sign back up. If we could be subscribed during the rest of the year we would.
tjalex
Just added $25/mo more :) awesome, awesome idea!
yezooz
Me too :) Can't wait for the first package!
e12e
Did you get an email from my friend a while back about the possibility of buying real/high quality soy sauce? I'm not so much curious about the actual exchange, just reminding you that there are other (food) things that are hard to get outside of Japan (partly due to the language barrier, and not all traditional crafts shops being particularly Internet savvy) -- that a lot of people would likely be willing to pay a premium for. It would proabably be a quite different business model - maybe enough of a change for you to keep your interest (and us to get our good stuff). I know he did sign up for the candy either way, and was very happy that I pointed him to your service ;-)

Btw, for others interested in good food, and/or Japanese food, the inspiration for this request came from the excellent documentary:

"Shoyu and the Secrets of Japanese Cuisine" / "Shoyu et les secrets de la cuisine Japonaise"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3898014/

http://www.pointdujour-international.com/catalogueFiche.php?...

richardknop
My Show HN project: https://pingli.st/

So far saw only minor interest. I have been slowly improving it since I posted it on HN.

But it is not profitable yet so I am focusing on my full time job and only spending evenings now and then on Pinglist.

karim79
In 2013 we show HN'd Kraken.io Image Optimizer: https://kraken.io while still working at our day jobs. Three years on and gazillions of iterations later, we're in profit, have received significant funding, and are serving thousands of paying customers and tens of thousands more free customers. We have since comfortably left our day jobs, and have built a technology stack we can be proud of. I expect we will still be hacking at this for years to come.
Exuma
That's quite cool. Would you mind explaining something to me? Where do you find customers?

I've always wondered how apps like yours (single isolated feature done well, available many other places for free) get customers. I've only built things which are niche-based so it's easier to find customers, but with your type of project it feels to me like gaining traction would be quite difficult. I always want to learn from people who have taken something so simple (not downplaying your efforts, just the 'concept'), and made it stick.

skilled
I think in this particular case a significant portion of customers are actually being converted through the free WordPress plugin that they provide. People know what quality looks and feels like, and are more than willing to pay for it. I suppose that's one slice of the cake. Needless to say, bloggers have promoted Kraken willingly because they want to provide content like "best image optimizers" etc,.
karim79
That's a good question, and as I'm replying from my phone, I'll try to be concise and to the point.

1) It started out as just an image optimization API (so it was a little bit of a niche product back in 2013).

2) Our API covered all major image formats, and supported both lossy and lossless optimization modes, which again, was pretty rare at the time.

3) Listen to customers, fix things, and add sensible features such as image resizing. Always listen to customers and try to understand what they want even if they don't know how to explain it themselves.

4) With enough people using our platform to essentially replace the development work, R&D and infrastructural requirements needed for a decent imaging workflow, the app will essentially market itself.

5) Develop a stack which can be rapidly scaled up and simultaneously allows for costs to be kept as low as possible. Pass on the value to customers at every available opportunity.

6) I'll edit this post and add more detail once I get to a real computer.

mbm
Beautiful website. Really love it.
arcatek
I made an emulation platform called Start9 (http://start9.io), but it didn't got a lot of traction, my "cofounder" lost motivation, and I haven't yet found how to actually make money with it (I only have a handful of daily users).

That being said, I'm still extremely proud of it, at least from a technical standpoint, and will probably keep it running for a long time.

NicoJuicy
Seems nice, did try it out now.. But had trouble finding all the controls ( arrows, enter and ?)
arcatek
A & B are mapped on respectively A/Q and W/Z/B, space and backspace are Select, and enter is Start.
jsingleton
Over 3 years ago I posted https://shutdownscanner.com. Ironically, I'm considering shutting it down. Perhaps to relaunch as an open source project, maybe rewritten in ASP.NET Core. Anyone have advice in opening up a project when decommissioning? I think it may still be useful to people so don't just want to turn the servers off.

I also posted https://unop.uk/tube (I built the original over 5 years ago) and I still use it pretty regularly, as the TfL site is so bloated for mobile use.

BrunoJo
I launched https://www.pexels.com/ two year ago - a website to find free high-quality photos. It started as a side project. Now we have hundred thousands of visitors each month and three people are working on it.
vitd
Interesting! Is this a full-time job for 3 people? Does your business run solely on donations or is there another source of income? (It wasn't obvious from what I saw on the site.)
BrunoJo
Two people work half-time and one guy works full-time on the project. In addition we have 2-3 freelancers who add photos. We make money through donations, ads and referral links to Shutterstock.
hienyimba
just checked it out. Looks awesome. I suppose it must be pretty difficult growing a site like this esp as this space is a bit crowded. How did you get the word out? That must be an interesting story.
webtechgal
Great site!!

Here is something you might want to look into:

I searched for 'money' and got the following by clicking one of the results (small photos):

https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-girl-eyes-young-41526/

Now, this photo is tagged with the keyword money and it is completely relevant too, but if you scroll down on that page to Similar Photos, they are all woman/girl/eyes type, so it looks like your code is showing similar photos based on random/un-ordered matches with the tags of the current photo. Instead, if you show similar photos with tags matching the original search term the user has typed in, that would be a lot more relevant and useful. HTH and best wishes.

Exuma
An empty wasteland of spam. Idea was amazing, had over 10,000 user-submitted items. But years later I have no interest in maintaining it. Oops :/
senko
A few years ago I posted a link to my collaborative whiteboard web app (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2886353) and got encouraging feedback.

Some five year laters, it's still very active, with some 100k monthly (free) users, and paying customers, with the (modest) revenue being poured back into development.

I had a few (5 or 6) more Show HNs over time, but those projects failed to gather outside (or keep my) interest.

bhouston
Did a Show HN on https://clara.io ~1000 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025427

We didn't get the biggest reception on HN, but we now have 200,000+ users, 500,000+ scenes, profitable and have strong growth. Still self-funding the project.

corysama
Awesome piece of work. Your front page seems very movie-focused. Do you get a significant percentage of users in games?
dhawalhs
1679[1] days ago I launched Class Central[2] via a comment on HN. It was something that I built over the Thanksgiving weekend and received over 300 visits from that comment.

Two years later I got into Imagine K12. Now we are doing around $100k ARR, ~250+k monthly uniques, and have been used by almost 5 million people.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3289393 [2] https://www.class-central.com/

s_kilk
[Show HN: Nightchamber, a slow-web social site: nightchamber.com]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881622

It's still running today, though the user-base has stabilised around a dedicated core of users, and not seeing much/any growth.

EDIT: holy shit, I just checked the stats, 7k unique users over the last two months. It's doing better than I remember.

curiousgal
I love Nightchamber!
s_kilk
Thanks! :D

Feel free to point more people towards the site! We could do with some new blood.

somethingsimple
Love it that you give each user a unique URL for access - I wish more services did that. Having to create a username and password each time I want to use a new service is so annoying that most of the time I just give up on it.
rayalez
About a year ago I have launched http://rationalfiction.io (a platfirm for publishing hard sci-fi). I'm still working on it, it's growing gradually, slow but steady. 900+ users by now.

A few months ago I have launched http://lumiverse.io (a website where you can publish and discover educational videos). Since the launch I had other priorities, so the traffic slowly trickled down, now it's consistently at around 100 visitors per day. I'm planning to get back to it soon with new ideas and improvements, hopefully it will take off.

electrotype
https://www.spincast.org

No comments at all on my "Show HN" thread! ;-)

But it's not that surprising since it's a new Java web framework (and it's still in beta).

The development goes very well though! WebSockets are now fully supported. Version 1.0.0 will be released in a couple of months.

If you are a Java developer and a Guice fan, please have a look. We are looking for new ideas and contributors.

lucaspottersky
and maybe also because Java is not trendy anymore?
electrotype
Of course it's not. Still, there are a lot of people who don't really care about node.js and other trendy "tech of the year".

We wrote about Java and the choices we made for Spincast here: https://www.spincast.org/about

pkd
Were you a C# dev for long? Your naming conventions reflect that. Traditionally, Interfaces are not prefixed with I in Java.

Can you some up some salient points which makes spincast different from all other existing Java web frameworks? (spark, ninja, jooby etc)

My interest is because I love Java and would love to have a great goto framework in this language.

electrotype
I've worked a couple of years with C# and, indeed, my love for "I" prefixed interfaces comes from there! In fact, Allman [0] is also my favorite indent style, but I've done much more Java than C# in my life, and I'm now used to the "{" at the end of the line.

That said, I don't really care that much about "Java standards". I like Java as a language (it's cross platform, solid, typed) and I use it the way I think it's best. For example, Spincast doesn't use the Servlet API at all.

Before starting Spincast, I've tried pretty much all those modern frameworks. Maybe I should have kept notes about what I didn't like about each of them, but I finally decided to start a new one. I would have loved to find a framework that would have met most of my preferences, and with an existing community, but I didn't. Maybe the closest one I found was Pippo [1]. I don't really like Spring (even if I'm a certified Spring developer) neither, even Spring boot.

What makes Spincast different, in my opinion? I guess one have to play with it a bit to really see how it works, how it feels... But the most obvious thing is that it's based on Guice from the ground up. Guice it the only strong dependency Spincast core has (except for SLF4J).

Maybe the section about Spincast Integration Testing [2] is a good read to have a feel on how Spincast works, and how Guice is used everywhere.

Anyway, thanks... There are now comments about Spincast on HN, wouhou! ;-)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style#Allman_style

[1] http://www.pippo.ro/

[2] https://www.spincast.org/documentation#testing_app_example

tschellenbach
getstream.io, show HN 2 years ago. Stream is an API for building, scaling and personalizing feeds. (Think Twitter/Facebook style feed technology in a box)

We now power over 300 production applications, raised funding and have gathered a pretty awesome team: https://getstream.io/team/

tbarbugli
Originally from Amsterdam, we joined Techstars in NYC 2015 and afterwards opened up an office in Boulder, CO
xando
Nearly a year ago I've posted "whoishiring.it" [0] as a visualisation for HN's "Who is hiring" thread with all the positions on the map. And it was received pretty damn well. Way better than I've expected.

Originally the idea was just to add better search mechanism for "Who is hiring" thread, but i've decided to go beyond that. I've added every big job board that I could find. Right now it aggregates 15956 jobs for IT from 12 different sources [1]. The website didn't make a dollar yet. Although I received few investment propositions to make something bigger out of it.

The current domain is whoishiring.io (google didn't like .it much)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9838955

[1] https://whoishiring.io/stats/

biztos
Did Google dislike the .it domain because it wasn't obviously connected to Italy, or was there something else?

Nice project by the way, I saw it for the first time on the last "Who's Hiring" thread.

xando
I'm far from being confident on any SEO matter. But, it looks like it. IT was treating domain as a local, like .pl or .de. I was trying to change that in google search console. But the option was inactive.

Thanks.

citricsquid
Most ccTLDs are heavily weighted by Google in favour of their locale, in practice this means if you use a ccTLD you can expect to suffer from a ranking penalty outside of the ccTLDs locale. If you use a .it domain you can expect to rank well in Italy but to rank poorly in the United States.

The exception to this rule are "generic" ccTLDs, Google has a number of generic ccTLDs, these are ccTLDs that they will treat as if they're not ccTLDs. This includes .io, .me and .tv[1].

I used to run a site from httpstatus.es, last year I switched the site from .es (Spain) to generic (.com) and have seen a significant increase in search engine traffic. Here is a 3 year traffic chart, red box is the switch from .es to .com: http://i.imgur.com/60RXFjP.png

I am confident from my own experience that there is a big penalty associated with using a non-generic ccTLD and businesses should be very careful when choosing a ccTLD if search engine traffic is meaningful to their business.

[1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en (scroll down to "More about domain determination")

pyk
This is great information -- thank you. Do you have any general advice for switching over from one domain & TLD to another -- i.e., setting up redirects, etc... for those that have linked to the previous domain, as well as for Google indexing (e.g., Google webmaster tools)?
pdappollonio
Dot me and dot TV are actually local domains, not ccTLD. The first one is from Montenegro and the second one is from the Island of Tuvalu. Although common sense has made a lot to make them look global, they're fairly local because they're not too much used for their intended purpose.
AlBentley
I have been thinking about this a lot. How were you able to measure the fact you were ranking poorly before making the switch?

We use a .st domain, and whilst it is not explicitly mentioned on Googles generic list there are very few localized .st sites so I am hoping Google is counting it as a generic domain.

Note most of our users are in the US!

shanwang
Last year I posted www.hnjobs.io, which is convenient tool to browse "who is hiring post", not nearly as sleek as yours, I only have a few hundred visitors a month, but it's my first project from learning angular/bootstrap/javascript/expressjs, so I'm happy about it:)
moron4hire
I eventually got what amounts to essentially a "sponsorship" to continue building my project as I see fit. It didn't come out of Show HN (I don't think I've ever gotten anything directly out of an HN contact), but it was certainly encouraging enough to get me to drive forward on the project and eventually make it what gets me the local attention I receive for it today.

My mode has changed, though. I've learned a lot in that time, and I no longer think of advertising and distribution online as a viable method for most projects. I've had far more success getting real engaged eyes on my projects by engaging people in person.

There is an adage in sales, "go to your customers." It is meant literally. Go physically to where people will not only be interested in your project, but they're also in the mood to "buy" (whatever that might mean for your project. Installing and incorporating into my daily routine a free app on a smartphone is a cost I frequently choose to avoid).

For my wife, that means the vast majority of her sci-fi novel sales have been through three book fairs in the last two years, not the 24/7 Amazon. It's mostly just a hobby for her, and it would take a lot of work to replace her current income, so we haven't done more, but there is definitely s direct correlation between effort in, sales out, which is noticeably absent online. It makes it a lot easier to continue making that effort.

For me, that means presenting at JavaScript and designer meetups.