[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Coming soon - "Meet the Batch" threads for ...
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       Tell HN: Coming soon - "Meet the Batch" threads for parallel Launch
       HNs
        
       Each YC startup gets one chance to do a Launch HN thread that gets
       placed on HN's front page [1]. This is one of the three things that
       HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it [2]. We started
       doing these in 2017 and they've worked out pretty well over the
       years [3], I think mostly because they're more interesting than job
       ads. However, they have to be written in a special way for that to
       work (more on this below).  Problem: HN's front page can only
       accommodate a fixed number of startups while YC keeps funding more
       (700+ a year and growing). We do two Launch HNs a day during the
       stampede before each Demo Day, but I think we overdid that in W21,
       and even 2 per day all year, which is out of the question, still
       wouldn't be enough.  Other problem: I work with the startups to
       edit their launch texts into a form that HN is more likely to find
       interesting. Mostly this consists of cajoling, persuading, and
       (when that fails) forcing them not to sound like marketing, sales,
       or PR. If you'd like to see the instructions we give founders about
       this, they're at [4].  Founders are used to talking to customers
       and investors, and those styles are terrible for HN, so most Launch
       HNs need a lot of editing. Unlike the front page, this work should
       be scalable, but it has to be done by someone who's familiar with
       what HN likes and what its conventions are, and it hasn't (yet)
       proven easy to train anyone to do it--you sort of have to dip them
       in the vat of HN over and over until they get steeped, and most
       people don't want to be dipped in a vat, or at least not this vat.
       So in practice I still do the editing and am still the bottleneck.
       40 startups are currently in the pipe and it's backing up faster
       than I can process them.  Hence, new idea time: we're going to try
       aggregate launch threads for YC startups, tentatively called "Meet
       the Batch". These will be like Launch HNs, but with more than one
       startup, and shorter blurbs. Each startup will post its blurb as a
       comment and then HN readers can discuss and interact with the ones
       they find interesting.  Since each of these will be in lieu of a
       Launch HN, the number of frontpage threads won't go up, but
       throughput will. We have no idea how well it will work--it's just
       an experiment. We'll probably start with one per week and do
       traditional Launch HNs the rest of the time.  Which startups will
       get standalone Launch HNs vs. being in the aggregate threads? I'll
       decide that based mostly on what I think HN is likely to find
       interesting. That's _not_ the same thing as which startups are good
       (or I think are good!) so please don 't take it as that sort of
       signal.  So anyway, that's the plan. I wanted to give you all a
       heads-up, first so you know what to expect, and second so we can
       answer any questions and have any meta discussion now, instead of
       later when comments should really be about the startups. If you
       have questions, feedback, flames, or hounds to unleash, have at it
       --also, any ideas about how we can do any of this better are most
       welcome.  p.s. Late Sunday is probably the HN equivalent of a
       Friday news drop but it's the only spare time I had to write this.
       We might re-up this thread tomorrow (a la [5]) so others get the
       info.  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/launches  [2]
       https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#yc - the other two are
       job ads and orange usernames.  [3] Past posts about this:
       https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
       [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html  [5]
       https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
        
       Author : dang
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2021-07-18 22:33 UTC (26 minutes ago)
        
       | merrvk wrote:
       | Great idea, looking forward to reading about the next batch
        
         | dang wrote:
         | If we do this every week it will hopefully be less overwhelming
         | than the press reports on Demo Day, which usually take the form
         | "Meet 75 of the 350 startups that launched on day 1" and then
         | again the next day.
        
       | ingend88 wrote:
       | Love the idea!
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-18 23:00 UTC)