Ask HN: Where are all the old Show HNs?
Searching for "Show HN" posts (using hn.algolia.com) reveals a sad story: Many of them are gone. I wonder what happens to Shown HNs, esp. the ones that are featured on HN, but then end up not existing anymore. Is it the server costs? Do they sell to other companies? Did the developer pass away and so did the link?
176 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] thread* Nobody uses product
* Person eventually retires product
* Person makes product, shares it
I'm starting to think the business books that say find the audience first might be onto something honestly. I still don't want to do it, but yeah
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/dotcom-pets-dot-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sICSyC9u5iI
(Classic 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade clip at 3:38: "Pets Dot Commitment"!)
They all say in some form or other: find where the people with the problems hang out, learn how they express their issues with the problems, fix the problems, explain to them in their own style and wording how your thing solves their problems, customers
At least that's how I remember it, pinches of salt all round on the exact learnings please!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667439
Lean Startup is the faster read but if I recall correctly Steve Blank was Ries' mentor/inspiration.
https://embeddedentrepreneur.com/
FWIW, apart from his books, he also does a lot to encourage and promote other founders. He seems like a decent guy.
To answer why: these were all side projects. Over the years, I created at least a dozen, and I can't maintain them all. Most are obsolete. Their last update is many years old. The websites are usually not mobile-friendly. Some had links to sites like Google+ that do not exist anymore.
Every minute I spend on updating old sites is a minute I can't spend on the newer stuff I am working on.
content-addressable hashes are forever
No, it might be permanently useless but it could also become useful in the future. Not only could you ask around archives if they have that hash, some random peer might also appear with the content in the future. Although unlikely. Although infinitely better than location-addressing that will for sure break at one point.
> so having the thing the hash was generated from isn't enough to make the hash live again
Of course, if it was that easy it wouldn't be a hash :)
> But that's just IPFS... we really deserve a better content address system
I was not considering IPFS, just thinking about content-addressing in general.
That's even intended and part of the specification as a "Expires at" field!
I don't think it's terribly surprising that a high percentage of early projects demoed here don't make it to market.
In a sense, I've intended for these projects to fail.
I throw something out there, see if it sticks, and is worth pursuing. Most things aren't worth pursuing. I get bored, distracted, and find something else "shiny" to do for a while. That "shiny" thing is usually my actual business. Sometimes one of my projects succeeds, and becomes an "actual" business. Other times, it sort-of hangs on for years on auto-pilot. Sometimes one of those auto-pilot things takes off. If not, that's fine.
Many of these projects can be thought of like R&D; most R&D, really, is a dead end, or something that quietly gets folded into a pre-existing project, or just gets turned into "useful knowledge" for the next bit of research.
But if you have above average engineering skills and make some technically engineered part of the business your secret sauce, that doesn’t save you from having to do the marketing but it does mean when other people enter you can compete on technical excellence with those above average skills.
That seems like a better plan? Maybe it’s a trap for engineers like me who want to keep focusing on the engineering, but it seems more viable than me marketing potatoes.
- You can post it in places where people might be interested, like HN, Reddit, ProductHunt, Twitter, forums, etc. (carefully and thoughtfully, so it doesn't come across as spam).
- You can email it to people who might be interested (very carefully and thoughtfully, with an individually tailored message, so it doesn't come across as spam).
- You can email it to tech journalists, bloggers, and other people with influence, hoping that they'll help you publicize it.
- You can email it to a pre-existing audience you've built up if you're fortunate enough to have one.
- You can buy ads.
- You can produce content or do cross-promotion (which you say you don't want to do--it can work but certainly isn't required).
If none of the above is getting any traction, most likely the product and/or pitch isn't compelling enough and you should iterate on that before investing more time or money into marketing.
Anyway, my favorite book on the topic that I've read is "Disruption by Design" by Paul Paetz. One of the core ideas I took from it is about identifying the "Job to be done" that you're selling. As a marketing mentor once told me, nobody buys drills. They buy the hole.
Another important concept is knowing your audience (this was also the golden rule I took away from my degree program and has also served me well socially). Nothing is for everyone. Know that your audience actually needs the thing you're selling them. This also means that you can in good conscience be confident in selling it to them because you know they actually need it. Where marketing comes in is that they may not yet understand how your thing delivers the value they want and it's the job of your marketing/advertising to convince them that it does. Or they might see the value but think your price is too high. Then you have to decide whether you agree with them or explain why your price is fair for what you're delivering.
Anyway, as an engineer with a marketing education, I found it an enjoyable and inspiring read that was more direct and, I felt, insightful than other, fluffier marketing resources I've read. But it is more about the concepts and not about the gritty details (though for my money, observing marketing efforts at the companies I've worked for, doing your own legwork and meeting directly with your customers to understand their needs and pitch a trial of your product if it fits those needs is miles more effective than Facebook or Google ad campaigns - the only thing they have going for them is sheer scale at the expense of everything else).
Fair disclaimer, though: I have never run a business and never plan to. I just want to make cool stuff and my current employer is sufficiently fulfilling in that regard.
"A growth platform for hackers that hate selling."
It's a systematic approach to growth targeted at developers and based on the book Traction [0] by DuckDuckGo's founder.
https://www.wax.run
0 - https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...
I usually post my projects to Hacker News or Reddit or something. None of them every turn into businesses, although I'd like them too.
For all the focus that HN has on startups I still feel like the vast majority of threads I am reading sorely lack focus on business model.
Perhaps I am not reading the right threads, or I am not reading them deeply enough. Admittedly I tend to read most about technologies that I find interesting. But even when I try to keep an eye out for the business side of things I rarely see it.
The main things I know about covering this area of things are:
- YC Startup Library https://www.ycombinator.com/library
- YC Startup School https://www.startupschool.org/
- Actually applying to YC and, if you get accepted, getting guidance that way https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
But beyond that, aside from a couple of sites that are sometimes posted and whose names escape me at the moment, I can’t think of any.
What are some good keywords or specific threads to look into further regarding business models and getting customers?
We got close to 2000 app installs in 24 hours. Plus it was picked up by a gaming news website, which led to further marketing opportunities for us. I have since sold the project to my cofounder and he redirected the domain to his main webshop. So while it looks offline, the product is actually still alive and well.
As for why there are no new ones: I decided to up my game by doing a riskier and more challenging project next. Maybe others did the same and then you'd naturally expect to see more time in-between two Show HNs from the same person.
In this case, "had" seems more appropriate. "I had a very successful.."
Like bckr says below, if a "Show HN" is a product class, then the statement makes sense.
Obligatory net search:
'Used to is a phrase that can mean “accustomed or habituated to” or refers to something from the past that is no longer true.'
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/used%20to
used to - verb
1—used to say a situation existed in the past but does not exist now
2—used to say something happened repeatedly in the past but does not happen now
(I also find it somewhat amusing that both definitions include "used to" in them)
https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item102725.html
I meant to say that I once had an app which was launched as Show HN, but that the app isn't mine anymore.
BTW, closer to the original topic, I just had a lot of fun in the past 1-2 hour(s) twiddling around with Bomberland, the Show HN from 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640804#28647120.
New products and startups will often pivot away to something else, so it you see a post highlighting www.fastchargers.io the company might well pivot into www.advancedknittedjumpers.io due to reasons - yes I am being a little cynical, but it really does happen.
The show HN did bring a big traffic spike for maybe a week, which brought a lot of dopamine. At this point I thought that I got the ball rolling, but the traffic faded away. After this, promoting the project became more difficult because every other channel brings much less traffic than what you see during the Show HN.
Maybe there is always something like a post-Show-HN depression, either because you got no upvote or because the traffic spike fades away.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16608812
I brought on a CEO and CCO first, essentially two extra cofounders. Then mostly engineers.
- Started working on the product to scratch an itch. Essentially couldn't find an easy, dev friendly synthetics solution.
- Quit job, started freelancing. Coded first version on the side.
- Launched on HN and Producthunt. No upvotes, no one noticed.
- Kept working and working. Code -> Ship -> Talk to users.
- First year had 10 customers.
- Second year more and more traction. Some really cool customers joined. Zeit (now Vercel) etc.
- Noticed that doing this all by yourself is crazy. Actively looked for co-founders. Got lucky and found two excellent ones.
- Decided to turn the bootstrapped company into a VC backed one because of ambition and timeliness (e.g. organic takes too long to make a dent right now in a very busy market)
- Raised a round. Hired basic team. Mostly engineers.
- Spent ~12 months turning a one-man show into a real company.
- Changed pricing model and got more and more traction.
- Raised another round after figuring out the basics of marketing/distribution, product vision and customer traction. I guess you call that product market fit.
- Right now ramping up the team and delivering on a vision.
Most of this was done remote and basically right when Corona lock downs started happening.
Just wondering, when no one noticed on HN and PH, how did you get your first users and eventually grew bigger?
My team and I launched a workflow tool which was not ready for the dev community yet, just recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28392756]. Low engagement on SHOW HN was somewhat expected, but similarly to your case, we're launching again soon.
It's only worth writing blogs and posting them to HN if this website is where your target audience hang out!
(N.B. I'm not affiliated with Checkly, other than being a happy customer!)
[0]: https://www.paperworker.se
Today it seems to need shadow accounts, or buy booster packs or some such. Suffice it to say when I announced ZimTik, noone noticed.
caveat: I could be generalizing based on a few personal experiences.
My experience has been that sometimes you post something and it absolutely takes off. Other times you post something and it falls completely flat. I can't tell what causes the difference, but it's good that they're doing things like the second-chance pool to blunt the extreme variability.
There are many excellent projects posted in Show HN that get no traction (upvotes) at all. And then there a few lucky ones that suddenly take-off and make it to the HN front page.
There's no "wisdom of the crowds" moment that propels one Show HN entry to success over another because it's more worthy or excellent. In many cases it's simply down to random luck: capturing the attention of HN readers at a fortunate moment. Or not.
Most of the projects on Show HN don't have retention figured out, so most of the traffic from Show HN will not convert into useful numbers for them.
I also want to point out that many Show HN projects wrongly assume that HN is the niche for them, simply because they themself are a "hacker". But this is not a useful distinction. If you're looking for your niche, for product market fit, you want to slice into small concrete audiences, like maybe "developers at 10-50 employee startups in credit building fintech within the bay area". Posting a Show HN isn't a cure to not having a niche of users, unless you're specifically targeting this niche.
Check out the Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20309255
I'm still actively working on that project, and a countless number of features have been added. Yeah, a few people here and there use it, and it is costing me about $100 a month to host on AWS, but I'm not bothered. I'm still very passionate about this space, and nothing else really interests me as much.
If anyone is interested in checking it out, the site is https://ampl.fi/
Sorry, if my comment sounded rude. I'm just curious to know :)
I bill the site as more of a music streaming and storefront service. It's much more in-line with services like Bandcamp and Soundcloud, where users can upload their own music. The site leans more towards Bandcamp in that users can monetize their work, and the site takes a very small fee for transactions. I'm focusing more on community aspects, like remix and sample competitions, as well as live music sharing, to help differentiate it even more.
I checked ten in the most popular and all resolved correctly. When sorting by date, I see a ton of Show HNs posted recently.
I was surprised to see so many Show HNs posted recently, I personally don't see them hardly ever on the front page anymore. Are they no longer shown as much?