HN Explorer

Ask HN: For those with a successful Show HN, what happened next?

19 points by altdataseller ↗ HN
Did it propel you to build a successful, profitable product?

Did it give you new connections?

Did it help you get a new higher paying job?

Or did it just result in a spike in traffic, but nothing really changed afterward?

21 comments

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gigatree
It stayed at #1 for most of the day. Naively, I quit my job to work on it full time. Pretty sure it’s also what got me a YC & Sequoia interview. Alas, making something HN viewers find cool != PMF… at least not yet.
ushakov
Same experience here. I'd say building something HN viewers find cool almost guarantees that you won't make any money with it.
ushakov
successful yes, profitable no

connections, lots of

did not help with a job

pvg
Many, probably most Show HN’s don’t have any of these as an immediate goal - they’re someone’s project rather than nascent business.
jimhi
Majority of my projects were the front page of hackernews, I also tracked traffic, engagement, and users each time. End result is its almost entirely for my own ego and my peers seeing what I've done. No lasting users

https://dare.fail/me/

cookiengineer
I love that website!

I wish more founders were like you, being open about what ideas failed in the past and honestly reflecting on why that was the case. Most founders I've met never speak about their failures and have a huge survivor's bias, and this is such a narrow game of chance that it's ridiculous to talk about the odds of succeeding when you don't have an unfair advantage over your competition.

BugTraqer
thats both impressive and inspiring, cheers
tirthvora
Woah! just went through the website, and this is the most unique and oddly inspiring thing I've ever seen.
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bko
I would like to see what percentage of show hn actually link to an unabandonded website. Almost every time I looked at a show hn more than a year old, it lead to a dead site. It’s a big risk to start using and relying on a product if it’s not a real business
Veuxdo
Probably a lot, but that's fine. Early, experimental projects are kind of the point, I think.
dabber
> I would like to see what percentage of show hn actually link to an unabandonded website.

Someone shared this post titled "Track HN: Survival Rate of Show HN Stories" about 9 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36313562

Side note: I hope you find that interesting because searching for a post I only vaguely remembered using the only two search terms I could think of: "Show HN" and "analysis" was a fairly frustrating endeavor.

bko
Exactly what I was looking for. Much appreciated!
jaflo
I posted last year and reached #1 for a bit. The initial flood of users left, but my MAU is climbing bit by bit again after investing into SEO.

Profitable? Yes (as in making more than spending on it), but nowhere near enough to work on it full time. Successful? I think so? My first breakthrough project!

New connections? Yes, I got reached out to by some companies and individuals and had and still have conversations about it with folks interested in the tech. Also made me invest more into learning B2B after initially building the product as B2C.

Didn’t help with my career per se but opened a lot of doors in case something doesn’t work out with my current career.

Definitely a huge spike that I haven’t hit again. But the project isn’t dead.

danbmil99
Hit #1. Encouraged us to apply for YC. Told we made "top 10%" but no dice.

I think we could have leveraged it more effectively but it's hard to get everything lined up right. We sort of pivoted from what was big on "show me" to something we thought was more practical and salesworthy, but eh. It's an odds game in the end.

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