Ask HN: has anyone else found it hard to get attention for their new startup?

6 points by hoodoof 13y ago ↗ HN

Anyone got any inspirational stories to share about how it was hard to get any attention or traffic for your new startup, and hopefully you overcame this and found an audience and users?

4 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 22.1 ms ] thread

philfreo 13y ago ↗

There's some generic advice, but perhaps it would be more constructive to post about what your startup does / who your target market is, since that will often change the strategy significantly.

proexploit 13y ago ↗

I agree completely. Generating traffic / gaining users is different in a lot businesses (to be extreme, you wouldn't try to sell a $50k/mo B2B subscription via banner ads on a porn site).

You're very lucky in the HN is an intelligent community that will most likely spend the time to point out where you can improve and what you're doing wrong with experience in a huge range of businesses. What they can't do is distill that information down so simply that it applies to all businesses.

benologist 13y ago ↗

I think everyone struggles with this - building something is a lot easier than building something popular.

Advertising may be an option. Find relevant communities you can be part of. Write useful, industry-related content and share it with industry-related blogs. Affiliate systems might work. For software/apps/games/etc 3rd party marketplaces, publishers, distributors might help.

Persistance is the main factor though. Overnight success is usually backed by hundreds or thousands of overnight experimentation and failure.

stevesaldana 13y ago ↗

I recommend jumping into topics that are relevant to what you are working on and aim to be a subject matter expert on whatever it is. I got involved in a conversation on HN related to my project (how to manage debt) and came away with a lot of good feedback and a few signups. It didn't solve the problem overnight, but every little bit helps.