> Should you focus on SEO in the early days of your startup? Probably not
I would completely disagree with this (product dependent).
If your product is a consumer app - I would highly prioritize and understand SEO before even having a product complete. Develop a good understanding of SEO around your product domain and niche.
When I'm in marketing mode and I have to spam, I do my best to keep a 1:1 schill to not related to my product comment ratio. As a founder it is your job to spam your product but I think there are ways to be tactful and give back to the platforms you're schilling on.
I also find that it's way more effective to live in the comment sections. Rarely does the "Hey, look at me, I'm selling a piece of software" post genuinely do well. It's always so tempting to do that too but It's way better to find someone asking specifically for a thing you're solving and respond to the individuals.
Are these sorts of general advice on how to do X even valuable today when you can put the details of your start-up into AI and get a more customized and moderately more thoughtful actions based on what your start-up does, who your customers are, etc?
Who's still going through these kinds of docs?
I know micro.so (I'm not affiliated with them) have documented how to build agentic B2B sales AI that you can download (if you give them your email address).
https://www.micro.so/guides/sales
Thank you for sharing this. I found some good articles in what you shared. The long lists of places to post are not that helpful. I've poured through 100 of them in the past and only the top 20 make a difference, you might want to update the list to prioritize. I tend to point Claude Code or Codex at these lists, have them evaluate the scores of the sites and give me a priority list.
The long lists of "places to post your launch" are less useful than people think. I've had way better results from just hanging out in communities where my users already are and actually participating in discussions over weeks/months before ever mentioning what I'm building. Cold-posting your launch link to 50 subreddits and forums gets you traffic with zero retention. The founders I know who grew organically all say the same thing: be a genuine member of the community first.
Posting a product on any of these sites will not have the same impact as it did before AI. Not because your product is not good, but because there is much more noise now.
This applies to social media posting, SEO, articles, you name it. AI has amplified the noise to the point where finding something useful is pretty hard now.
Building in public is and was always a fake trend. You see a few who made it a long time ago by posting their journey (personal choice), and then everyone jumps in to spam, which is back again to the noise, ending with a lack of value.
I feel for anyone trying to take a product to the market right now, while there are more tools to build, marketing has gotten a lot harder, consumers are struggling financially, and companies are trying to stay afloat due to a lack of growth.
Marketing for founders in 2026: just buy ads and invest into actual marketing. Because everyone else is busy spamming SaaS directories, subreddits and twitter (often with sock puppets) and wasting everyone’s time.
This game is getting so hard. Everyone can now spam build like Pieter Levels and Marc Lou did years ago, so solo bootstrapping’s got way harder it feels.
I’ve taken a break from building to try to find an audience, a real problem, and real users before building anything anymore.
Just launched an open-source tool on a few subs; r/SideProject barely moved, but r/software and r/Markdown got like 4k views each. What did something for me was actually just describing the situation that led me to build the thing. People who had the same problem showed up.
Eh, I question the list here. Why? Because they're all startup founder focused sites and communities.
Unless your product or service is aimed at other founders, or a techie focused audience in general, that's not where your customers are. Advertising there is like a game developer marketing their game to other devs or a writer marketing their book towards other writers.
What you really want to do is figure out who your audience actually is, figure out where they hang out online, and promote it there. Niche specific forums, subreddits, Discord servers, social media communities, etc.
That said, there's no real harm in advertising in these places, and other founders can give you useful feedback.
Funny thing is, I originally started the subreddit just to help people in my country, where fitness information is often inaccurate or misleading.
But over time, I started getting messages from people in other countries saying they found it useful too.
it grew into a collection of detailed fitness guides written by me and a few other contributors.
At one point I even noticed people linking to our guides from social media, Medium articles, and different Reddit threads, which was pretty surprising.
My SaaS is almost done and I'm about to embark on some months of cold-calling (it will be brutal). I'll probably use a google sheet as a database. Any better suggestions?
Pure B2B and pure B2C are so different that I don't trust any resource like this that doesn't clearly distinguish between them. They're pretty much entirely different fields. And almost all new software is one of either two.
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but while directories and similar channels are useful, I felt like I was just shooting darts in the dark without understanding sales and marketing from first principles and hoping something would stick.
I had three side projects and kept struggling to get any real traction or traffic without becoming spammy across the internet. So I decided to approach it the same way I approach learning anything new: through books, courses, and solid foundational material.
HN had a few excellent suggestions. One of them was Founding Sales. Another, which I came across through a friend’s recommendation, was Alex Hormozi’s series. He seems to have something of a cult following, which made me a bit skeptical at first, so I decided to just read the first 100 pages before forming an opinion.
I ended up finding it genuinely useful, especially for understanding the psychology and mindset needed to sell something. I now highly recommend his book $100M Leads to technical friends who are trying to figure out how to sell what they’ve built.
I’m still learning, if you’ve any good recommendations, please drop them below
1. The only result I'd expect from posting on launch platforms/software directories is a huge number of spam in my inbox to take my product to the top of the list.
2. Selling lifetime deals is the easiest way to become a slave of small paying customers without even knowing if your product is going to find PMF ever.
3. You can't just go to a subreddit and post your product. And the ones that allow anyone to post, well, you can guess the expected outcome from those.
I run a full stack digital marketing service, and here's what I'd recon:
1. If you're developing for developers, HN is the best place to post. For both to collect feedback, and to get early customers.
2. If you're building a B2C business, start with a social presence. This is a must in today's ecosystem. DON'T LAUNCH TO THE VOID.
3. If you're building a B2B business, try to get into an accelerator like YC, who can make lots of customer intros in the early days. And given how hard it's to get into an accelerator - you should try Google ads, and maybe a couple of linkedin campaigns if you've a sharp First Target Customer Profile (not vague ICP) as fallback.
2) looks like a magpie accumulation of data and resources, I don't trust even the author reads all of this
We know there's a lot of information in the internet, the issue is almost never lack of information but knowing what to read. That takes criteria, filtering, an ordered path.
3) quality pretty bad, lots of dead links and advice like 'launch on product hunt'. lol lmao even,
Decent guide/list but it feels as if its for founders who love to build first and leave everything else as an afterthought. Like, the first section is Places To Launch Your Startup.
A really big up for you, I launched my lib https://pithos.dev fews days ago, and I tried to coordinate posts on HN, Reddit, dev.to and Linkedin... but it was a failure because I didn't have accounts for HN and Reddit, so I was not able to post :) Now I understand I have to interact with people to win karma and it's a better way to share and communicate with a community !
Might be you could add this point to your guide ?
Some feedback, your description on frontpage: "Everything you need. Nothing you don't. Zero dependencies. 100% TypeScript." tells nothing about what is your project exactly..
34 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 50.7 ms ] threadI would completely disagree with this (product dependent).
If your product is a consumer app - I would highly prioritize and understand SEO before even having a product complete. Develop a good understanding of SEO around your product domain and niche.
If it’s a B2B - then yes, I would agree.
1. can all tell
2. will not use your product
Please stop polluting the global commons
Signed everyone <3
I also find that it's way more effective to live in the comment sections. Rarely does the "Hey, look at me, I'm selling a piece of software" post genuinely do well. It's always so tempting to do that too but It's way better to find someone asking specifically for a thing you're solving and respond to the individuals.
Who's still going through these kinds of docs?
I know micro.so (I'm not affiliated with them) have documented how to build agentic B2B sales AI that you can download (if you give them your email address). https://www.micro.so/guides/sales
This applies to social media posting, SEO, articles, you name it. AI has amplified the noise to the point where finding something useful is pretty hard now.
Building in public is and was always a fake trend. You see a few who made it a long time ago by posting their journey (personal choice), and then everyone jumps in to spam, which is back again to the noise, ending with a lack of value.
I feel for anyone trying to take a product to the market right now, while there are more tools to build, marketing has gotten a lot harder, consumers are struggling financially, and companies are trying to stay afloat due to a lack of growth.
please approach marketing like a human being. i.e one marketing starts before selling - before you have a product
if you adopt the 'indiehacker / influenzer' tactics outlined in that repo - you will starve.
I’ve taken a break from building to try to find an audience, a real problem, and real users before building anything anymore.
Unless your product or service is aimed at other founders, or a techie focused audience in general, that's not where your customers are. Advertising there is like a game developer marketing their game to other devs or a writer marketing their book towards other writers.
What you really want to do is figure out who your audience actually is, figure out where they hang out online, and promote it there. Niche specific forums, subreddits, Discord servers, social media communities, etc.
That said, there's no real harm in advertising in these places, and other founders can give you useful feedback.
But over time, I started getting messages from people in other countries saying they found it useful too.
it grew into a collection of detailed fitness guides written by me and a few other contributors.
At one point I even noticed people linking to our guides from social media, Medium articles, and different Reddit threads, which was pretty surprising.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tirzepatidecompound/comments/1omfgx...
so later i ended up launching a mobile app as well.
I had three side projects and kept struggling to get any real traction or traffic without becoming spammy across the internet. So I decided to approach it the same way I approach learning anything new: through books, courses, and solid foundational material.
HN had a few excellent suggestions. One of them was Founding Sales. Another, which I came across through a friend’s recommendation, was Alex Hormozi’s series. He seems to have something of a cult following, which made me a bit skeptical at first, so I decided to just read the first 100 pages before forming an opinion.
I ended up finding it genuinely useful, especially for understanding the psychology and mindset needed to sell something. I now highly recommend his book $100M Leads to technical friends who are trying to figure out how to sell what they’ve built.
I’m still learning, if you’ve any good recommendations, please drop them below
1. Keeping a consistent devlog on YouTube. It's the #1 source of traffic.
2. Getting a rank 1, page 1 HN post for a technical blog post related to our product.
3. Word of mouth. It's slow, but it works.
Just thought I'd chip in. The devlogs work the best though. Plus they keep momentum.
2. Selling lifetime deals is the easiest way to become a slave of small paying customers without even knowing if your product is going to find PMF ever.
3. You can't just go to a subreddit and post your product. And the ones that allow anyone to post, well, you can guess the expected outcome from those.
I run a full stack digital marketing service, and here's what I'd recon:
1. If you're developing for developers, HN is the best place to post. For both to collect feedback, and to get early customers.
2. If you're building a B2C business, start with a social presence. This is a must in today's ecosystem. DON'T LAUNCH TO THE VOID.
3. If you're building a B2B business, try to get into an accelerator like YC, who can make lots of customer intros in the early days. And given how hard it's to get into an accelerator - you should try Google ads, and maybe a couple of linkedin campaigns if you've a sharp First Target Customer Profile (not vague ICP) as fallback.
1) has llm vibes, emojis on headers, llm speak
2) looks like a magpie accumulation of data and resources, I don't trust even the author reads all of this
We know there's a lot of information in the internet, the issue is almost never lack of information but knowing what to read. That takes criteria, filtering, an ordered path.
3) quality pretty bad, lots of dead links and advice like 'launch on product hunt'. lol lmao even,