[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where are all the old Show HNs?
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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?
Author : behnamoh
Score : 221 points
Date : 2021-09-28 12:54 UTC (10 hours ago)
| yoz-y wrote:
| Personal anecdote: one ShowHN I did with a friend [0] did not
| take off and an update to iOS APIs made it very tedious to
| update. Thus we retired it.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497520
| imgabe wrote:
| I just submitted one! Give it some love
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682499
| grinich wrote:
| We launched WorkOS as a "Show HN" last year. [0]
|
| Now we've raised almost $20M, employ 30 people, and have a ton of
| happy customers.
|
| (Thanks HN! :))
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607402
| boplicity wrote:
| I've created so many failed projects.
|
| 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.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| There is a market for almost anything as long as the marketing
| is done right. With right strategy you can even launch a "uber
| for potatoes" and be successful. Building a project is
| overnight task, the next few years are growing the customers
| and marketing it.
| totetsu wrote:
| Find hot potatoes in your area.
| mattnewton wrote:
| If your secret sauce is marketing you have to be a great
| marketer, or I think you will just be proving the market for
| someone with deep pockets and better marketing.
|
| 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.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Does anyone know of a good marketing guide for engineers? I
| sort of grew up engineering-wise with a "if you build it,
| they will come" attitude to products and I've realized that
| isn't very realistic anymore, but at the same time I'd still
| like a guide to marketing that lets me do a bare minimum set
| of easy actions that should work marginally well. I don't
| really want to churn out marketing content all the time, or
| pursue affiliate deals, nor do I want to create spam in
| people's inboxes, etc., and I've always, I think, looked down
| on companies that have to do this, telling myself "bad
| products need a sales/marketing team, good products sell
| themselves". So what resources should someone like myself
| consult? Multiple times in my life I've had that situation
| where I work on a side project for several years, "launch
| it", and nothing happens, so I'd like to avoid that going
| forward if I can, even if it means learning about marketing.
| indigochill wrote:
| I majored in "Strategic Communication" (a mix of
| PR/advertising/marketing with a bit of journalism for good
| measure) and transitioned to software engineering because I
| decided I didn't want to make a living pitching my ideas to
| stakeholders. Joke was on me, I'm still doing that.
|
| 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.
| kehers wrote:
| I think a better route is getting someone to handle the
| marketing. As engineers, even when we know what to do in
| terms of marketing, we still find it hard to do because
| it's not something we enjoy like engineering.
| danenania wrote:
| There's no real magic trick.
|
| - 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.
| Maraguy wrote:
| You can also add indiehackers onto that list; great
| community of makers
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| This is a very high value comment, thanks for sharing the
| insight.
| codazoda wrote:
| How do you know which products will not fail? What is your
| marketing strategy?
|
| 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.
| boplicity wrote:
| When I start on something, I usually think about all of the
| components it would actually need, in order to succeed. A
| 'half-baked' business plan, so to speak. Sometimes, I start a
| project in order to test the entire plan, but usually, I
| start a project either to test just one aspect of it, or, as
| often as not, just to scratch an itch. There should always be
| an _idea_ of the "growth engine" that could potentially
| drive the business. (Which may change.) If you want it to be
| a business, don't think of it as a product, think of the
| entire business. Though, you don't have to implement the
| entire business right away. Find out, as quickly as possible,
| if there's _any_ chance of viability, whether you 'd actually
| like to spend more time on it, and whether some of your
| assumptions are true or false. A project isn't a business.
| duck wrote:
| I used a "Tell HN", but mine from 11 years ago is still going
| strong. :)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1494362
|
| That said, I think most of them die because of a lack of time
| and/or other interests come along. I can't even count how many
| folks have reached out about starting a similar newsletter and
| only one or two kept going for more than year. With side-project
| especially, it is hard to find users, and that can be pretty
| discouraging.
| zschuessler wrote:
| Which query are you using where you see missing data?
|
| 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?
| bckr wrote:
| My understanding is that this post is about where Show HN
| projects ultimately end up, not about the rate of new Show HNs.
| TheDarkLegend wrote:
| hi can you make afk arena closer today pls?
| mijustin wrote:
| We launched Transistor.fm three years ago with a Show HN [0].
|
| The company's gone on to do better than we could have dreamed.
| We're profitable, paying ourselves well, have hired two people,
| and have a pretty calm existence (during the pandemic we averaged
| 25 hours per week).
|
| Three things that helped:
|
| 1. Self-funding meant we needed to get to profitability as quick
| as possible.
|
| 2. We targeted a market we understood, where there was
| demonstrated demand. We weren't trying to invent a new category.
|
| 3. Having a co-founder (Jon). We had complimentary strengths
| (full stack dev for him, marketing and sales for me) that really
| helped us run fast.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16755754
| TheDarkLegend wrote:
| hi can you make arena closer afk in diep.io today pls?
| [deleted]
| perilunar wrote:
| Where are all the Show HN comments? Most submissions get 0-1
| comments.
| discordance wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...
| omarhaneef wrote:
| OP means many (most? Most of the older?) links don't work
| implying the projects are not active.
| belltaco wrote:
| I think they mean the websites/products featured in Show HNs
| don't exist anymore.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I used to have a very successful Show HN for my 3D audio app
| spatialsoundcard.com
|
| 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.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Your English is otherwise excellent, but "used to have" implies
| that you had an object/thing for a period of time in the past,
| and don't any more. "I used to have a hovercraft".
|
| In this case, "had" seems more appropriate. "I had a very
| successful.."
| [deleted]
| rvba wrote:
| The second sentence says that it was sold, so "used to have"
| makes sense?
| hluska wrote:
| Sorry pal, you're not only wrong but this is an incredibly
| boring comment. "Used to have" is 100% correct.
| kube-system wrote:
| No, they are correct about the usage.
|
| 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)
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| We all understood what it meant. Also people have
| idiolects, and there is no such a thing as an
| authoritative version of English.
| kube-system wrote:
| Of course, dictionaries simply document established
| usage. The existence of idiolects isn't a prohibition on
| discussions of diction.
| [deleted]
| bencollier49 wrote:
| I don't read it that way at all. Just trying to be helpful
| as it still reads incorrectly to me.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Thanks for the correction :)
|
| 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.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Curious as a native English speaker you parsed that sentence.
| It is awkward, but I did not think it is actually incorrect.
| Is it?
| wyldfire wrote:
| Correctness is subjective. I didn't have trouble
| understanding it but it is not idiomatic.
| bckr wrote:
| Could mean "I used to have a product that I demonstrated in
| a Show HN (which product I later sold)".
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Well I always thought that a "Show HN" was a discrete
| event. So 'used to have' doesn't make sense to me unless
| there was something about it which was enduring.
|
| 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.'
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but technoatrophy is setting in.
| everling wrote:
| My project 1) is a side project, meaning I can commit as much or
| as little time as I'd like 2) is something I use myself 3)
| doesn't cost too much to run.
|
| I think these factors help the survival of a Show HN submission.
| Been running https://cinetrii.com for years.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Many show hns use temporary domains.
| dym_sh wrote:
| all domains are temporary
|
| content-addressable hashes are forever
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| > all domains are temporary
|
| That's even intended and part of the specification as a
| "Expires at" field!
| hobofan wrote:
| Content-addressable hashes are also "temporary" if you have
| only a single party storing the files (and that party goes
| away), which would be the case with most of the Show HNs.
| capableweb wrote:
| Nitpicky maybe, but the content-addressable hash is indeed
| forever. What's not forever (that you call "temporary") is
| what that hash is pointing to/is generated from. But I'm
| sure you knew this, just offering a clarification for the
| ones that might not.
| frazbin wrote:
| But if the live mirrors go away and the hash method or
| chunking method change (and they do) then the hash is
| permanently useless.. so having the thing the hash was
| generated from isn't enough to make the hash live again.
| But that's just IPFS... we really deserve a better
| content address system.
| capableweb wrote:
| > But if the live mirrors go away and the hash method or
| chunking method change (and they do) then the hash is
| permanently useless
|
| 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.
| hobofan wrote:
| One thing that I think is quite cool in that realm is
| that if ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proofs) advance a bit further
| you could easily proof that two hashes come from the same
| input without having to have access to the input. With
| that migrations of hash functions, and in practice
| providing alternative download locations from multiple
| content-addressable storage systems would be possible.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I don't think this would be _easy_.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| In that sense, domains are also forever. What changes is
| its ownership and (hence) what it is pointing to.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Maybe host the content on archive.org to begin with?
| Still not indefinitely permanent, but it might last 100
| years or until archive.org shuts down.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I recently posted my brand new Android (also iOS and MacOS)
| client for Hacker News called HACK. I was hoping to get more
| traction as I have seen many posts here asking about what mobile
| clients people use, so I thought people might be interested in my
| app. But not sure why it didn't get much traction :(
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28366991
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranapps.h...
|
| 3 years ago, I had also created the iOS & MacOS client for my
| Hacker News app HACK:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...
|
| It has all the awesome features - login with your HN account and
| swipe to vote, favourite, reply. You can submit new posts too.
|
| I believe my app is the only HN client to have:
|
| 1. The app has a built in reader mode as well as text to speech
| for an article or comment.
|
| 2. Push Notifications for replies to your post or comment.
|
| 3. Easily access an article via archive.is or archive.org or
| google cache
|
| 4. Built in browser has an ad blocker.
|
| 5. All the endpoints of HN.
|
| 6. Updated often. I have been updating both the iOS and Android
| versions as often as needed to implement customer requests.
|
| There's tons of customizations settings and colours, fonts, font
| size change etc available in the app.
|
| The Android version is brand new, so any feedback is appreciated.
| cridenour wrote:
| I use and love HACK!
| busymom0 wrote:
| Thank you! :)
| acheron wrote:
| I switched to using HACK I think when you first came out with
| the iOS version, and I still use it now. It works great,
| thanks!
| busymom0 wrote:
| Thank you! Glad to hear :)
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| From my experience with ShaderGif, which had some success (144
| points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18666146 It's still
| online, but I'm thinking of turning it off every now and then.
|
| 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.
| mattront wrote:
| Eight years ago, I launched a desktop website editor with Show
| HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023071
|
| The post got to the front page and brought in the first two
| sales. That got the ball rolling and I was able to focus full
| time on the project since then, building a small team and
| continuing improving and expanding the app.
|
| Here is the story of our first year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8878381
|
| And, I'll soon post another Show HN. This time for a side project
| created with my son.
|
| Thank you HN :)
| defaultchar wrote:
| I submitted a "Show HN" post recently and watched it sink down
| the "new" page without any interaction.
|
| I wonder if it's because I created a new account to post it, or
| more likely I had a terrible/generic sounding post title.
|
| It's also difficult to pick the right time of day to post. I
| thought I had it right - picking Monday morning west coast (US)
| time, but I guess there is a big difference between just before
| and just after people get to work!
|
| I would have liked to hear what people think, even if it's "This
| is bad, and you should feel bad".
|
| Edit: https://defaultcharacter.com/2021-09-bookmark-controller-
| int...
| cdelsolar wrote:
| My show HN was for Leftronic (YC, 2010), a company that makes
| dashboard software. We sold to AppDirect who now sells it as
| AppInsights. The exit was not "retire right away" but it
| significantly improved my quality of life and career prospects.
| bfirsh wrote:
| My Show HN for "Fig", with 15 points and a quip about it not
| working on clusters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7002634
|
| This got acquired by Docker and became Docker Compose. Swarm was
| the attempt at making clustering work.
| lambic wrote:
| How does this kind of acquisition work? Did they just contact
| you and foist money on you? Do you retain any control?
|
| Also I prefer 'fig' to 'docker-compose', maybe I'll alias it.
| mfrye0 wrote:
| That would be a great writeup. If someone tracked them down and
| figure out why they failed, how many were bought out, etc.
|
| I'm sure there are a lot of lessons to learn in there.
| gnicholas wrote:
| When I was working as a full-time lawyer, one of my colleagues
| told me to join HN and consider posting my side project there. I
| literally posted my Show HN [1] from my desk at the law firm,
| before going to lunch one day. My post made it to the front page,
| I took a screenshot, and then went off to lunch -- figuring that
| was as good as it would get.
|
| While I was gone, my post entered the top 3 and then hit the top
| spot. It stayed there for most of the rest of the day, and into
| the wee hours of the morning.
|
| I happened to have been invited to a VC mixer that afternoon, and
| I remember everyone was super impressed that some random lawyer
| had posted a Show HN that was literally-at-that-moment the top
| post on HN. Some guy from Samsung introduced me to his boss' boss
| and said they should license it (the first of many leads I failed
| to convert on!) I left my legal job a while later to work on
| BeeLine full-time, and it's been 7 years since then.
|
| We didn't go the traditional VC route, partly because we didn't
| have huge capital needs. Instead, I've mostly bootstrapped the
| thing, and we now have customers like Blackboard and Stanford
| (and a couple partnerships with HN/YCers, too! [2] [3]). There
| have been times where I considered going back to my legal career,
| but I would have kept BeeLine running in the background if so.
| I'm super appreciative to the community here, since it was what
| prompted me to make the transition to this very rewarding path!
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784
|
| 2: https://insightbrowser.com/
|
| 3: https://www.programaudioseries.com/
| fromaj wrote:
| I didn't even know that this popped off from HN, but I used to
| used this on my gen 1 iPad to read Cory Doctorow ebooks. I had
| completely forgotten it but I loved it and want to set it up
| again. So cool!
| gnicholas wrote:
| How did you read ebooks with BeeLine back then? There's one
| ebook app [1] (confusingly called ReadMe!, which is the name
| of a YC company) that has integrated our tech. But the ebook
| space has been a trouble spot for us because the platforms
| are so closed/DRM'd.
|
| In other news, we just released an iOS Safari extension, now
| that iOS 15 allows extensions. If you liked using BeeLine,
| I'd highly recommend checking it out, especially since we
| made it free for early adopters! [2]
|
| 1: https://readmei.com/
|
| 2: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/beeline-
| extension/id1571623734
| busymom0 wrote:
| Is there a way for me to utilize this in my Hacker News app
| for the comment text? I am the developer of HACK - iOS,
| MacOS and Android:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/hack-for-hacker-news-
| developer...
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranapps.
| h...
| rohithkp wrote:
| I just installed and tried out HACK and I think it is
| pretty neat! I am a long time user of BeeLine, been using
| it on HN and on the interweb in general. Would love to
| have a mobile app like HACK for HN with BeeLine
| integration! Nick is very prompt with his email, I am
| sure both of you can get it running very soon!
| busymom0 wrote:
| Thanks, I will be working on adding that in next week
| onwards when I return from vacation.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yes! I'd love to work with you to make this happen (and
| not just so I can use BeeLine on your app, which I have
| on my phone!). Shoot me an email: Nick at startup domain
| busymom0 wrote:
| Cheers, I will email you next week when I return from my
| vacation!
| swiftcoder wrote:
| We tend to view the tech industry through rose-tinted lenses
| because we mostly hear about the companies/projects that _didn
| 't_ fail - but statistically the vast majority of tech
| companies/projects fail.
|
| I don't think it's terribly surprising that a high percentage of
| early projects demoed here don't make it to market.
| MrDresden wrote:
| The survivor bias is strong with the tech industry
| toyg wrote:
| The vast majority of _companies_ fail, tech or non tech.
| Depending on sectors, survival rates after two years are
| typically 5% to 25% in most "capitalist" countries.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I've never gotten a project far enough to be able to be shown
| off.
|
| Every project I've started includes some sort of technical
| challenge that I need to figure out. For example, one of my
| projects was a clone of an arcade game called Killer Queen (this
| was before Killer Queen Black came out for PC and Switch). I
| wanted to make an online PC clone, so I needed to figure out how
| to keep all the game clients in sync, account for latency, while
| also preventing cheating.
|
| And I figured it out. Clients stayed in sync, cheating was
| impossible, and I could even handle clients disconnecting mid-
| game and could re-join and continue.
|
| ...but then I got bored and never actually implemented the game
| mechanics. Two years later, Killer Queen Black came out, making
| my clone obsolete, since I didn't have any features planned
| beyond what the original developer had done.
|
| I've had other games I've written where the core mechanics and
| game loop are implemented, but I got bored and didn't want to do
| the tedious polishing to make it look and feel nice enough to be
| marketable.
| culopatin wrote:
| Maybe what we need is a help HN. I would certainly love that
| too.
|
| Like a job opening but for HN people's projects
| codazoda wrote:
| I've released a lot of stuff^. My first rule is to simplify
| like your life depends on it. Remove everything you don't need.
| You can add more back in later. Make it ugly. Make a tiny part
| of it. But make something you can RELEASE.
|
| ^ Yeah, much of my stuff sucks, but it lived, for a while. To
| OP's point, I shut it off after a year or two without any
| interest.
| artembugara wrote:
| I went through my Show HN submissions. Wow, I did 7 in total.
| Conclusion in the end.
|
| A breakdown of each one with how much $ I've made for each one:
|
| 1) Show HN: Pygooglenews - Python library for advanced Google
| News data mining [0]
|
| Result: 165 HN points, 1k GH stars, some user flow to our website
| (later about this one)
|
| 2) Show HN: Nuntium - API to track the media presence of any
| organization or person [1]
|
| Result: 2 HN points, a side project which gave 0 results because
| we were just coding instead of thinking about what users want.
|
| 3) Show HN: News Extract API - Pull structured data from online
| news articles [2]
|
| Result: 130 HN points, 200 GH stars, one 29$ recurring customer
|
| 4) Show HN: Newscatcher API Beta - JSON API to search for
| relevant news data [3]
|
| Result: 4 HN points, 6 digits ARR startup we're still running!
|
| 5) Show HN: Py package to collect normalized news from (almost)
| any website
|
| Result: 26 HN points, 2.5k GH stars
|
| 6) Show HN: A simple RESTful API to extract structured data from
| news articles
|
| Result: Nothing
|
| 7) Show HN: 100k+ labeled news dataset
|
| Result: Nothing
|
| CONCLUSION: it's fine to fail on HN: success here doesn't mean a
| successful business, and vice versa.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23701343
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22946676
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924869
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22746586
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407835
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| I love number 4! :)
| artembugara wrote:
| thx ;)
| atum47 wrote:
| I use to post here my experiments and whacky projects, but I
| don't seem to have the time anymore.
| soared wrote:
| My domain registration and hosting is usually set to expire after
| 1 year if I don't renew, so that's usually the check in point
| where I decide to let something live or die.
| corobo wrote:
| * Person makes product, shares it
|
| * 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
| dym_sh wrote:
| only make products you yourself gonna use, that way you always
| have an audience of 1
| DonHopkins wrote:
| So you're saying that pets.com should have tried eating their
| own dog food?
|
| 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"!)
| OJFord wrote:
| The non-founder users of any pet-supply business are also
| not consuming edibles or clipping leads onto themselves.
| ColinWright wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food
| asmos7 wrote:
| can you elaborate - also what business books are you talking
| about?
| sparks1970 wrote:
| This is a central tenet of the Lean Startup by Eric Ries and
| the Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank et al.
|
| Lean Startup is the faster read but if I recall correctly
| Steve Blank was Ries' mentor/inspiration.
| corobo wrote:
| I can never remember the title of books sorry, other than The
| Mom Test because it was on HN recently[1]. Probably Company
| of One mentioned it too, I read that recently.
|
| 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
| Strom wrote:
| You'll see the find-your-audiance-first mantra in most modern
| business books. If you want a specific title, then The Lean
| Startup is a decent startup business book.
| Liron wrote:
| I didn't write a book on this subject but I made a site:
| https://bloatedmvp.com
| chrischapman wrote:
| Thanks for this. It looks like a really useful resource. I
| recently had a Show HN and got zero traction. I'm
| definitely going to work through each item and hopefully
| see where I went wrong.
| Liron wrote:
| Cool, I'm also happy to chat about this stuff if people
| hit me up on email
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 0des wrote:
| Ah, such is life. The cycle continues.
| dt3ft wrote:
| I did one show hn for 20-things.com, but I received 0 comments. I
| highly doubt that anyone saw my post :) The project is alive and
| kicking, and I intend to keep it alive for many years to come.
| tnolet wrote:
| Random data point. My "Show HN" [0] for my side project back in
| early 2018 is now a 20+ people company. It was bootstrapped by me
| but we went the VC route later.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16608812
| mstade wrote:
| We're using Checkly for our startup[0], had no idea about your
| backstory! We're very pleased with your service - thank you!
| :o)
|
| (N.B. I'm not affiliated with Checkly, other than being a happy
| customer!)
|
| [0]: https://www.paperworker.se
| tnolet wrote:
| Thanks, this is amazing! Happy to have you!
| holler wrote:
| Congrats! That's a great story. How long did you work on it
| solo? Who was the first person you brought on?
| tnolet wrote:
| I worked on it close to two years by myself. But I mixed in a
| minimal amount of freelancing to pay the bills. Took quite a
| while to get the first 10 customers: we're in a busy market.
|
| I brought on a CEO and CCO first, essentially two extra
| cofounders. Then mostly engineers.
| [deleted]
| tixocloud wrote:
| Congrats and thanks for sharing. Would love to hear the journey
| and thought process that you went through.
| tnolet wrote:
| Thanks, it's a pretty long story and still very actively
| developing I guess. Let's try and boil it down:
|
| - 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.
| inferense wrote:
| thank you for sharing, this was a fascinating read.
| Especially not giving up after a failed launch and turning
| it into something great..
|
| 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.
| tnolet wrote:
| Blogging helped a lot. Really detailed, high value blogs.
| I was on the front page of HN many times because of the
| blogs.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Great product and agree that high value blogs work on HN
| but...
|
| It's only worth writing blogs and posting them to HN if
| this website is where your target audience hang out!
| [deleted]
| brundolf wrote:
| Lots of Show HNs are just projects, not products. If that project
| costs money to host, and the person loses interest in it/doesn't
| acquire a dedicated fanbase, they'll probably stop paying the
| bills
| nkrumm wrote:
| side project idea: create a bot that takes a screenshot of all
| new Show HNs, and post a comment to the thread with the
| screenshot
| lbj wrote:
| Posting on HN has become an artform that Im not skilled in. Years
| ago, you could just post an interesting post you can across and
| wrote, and frequently they would jump to the top.
|
| 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.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I don't think shadow accounts are necessary, and given the ring
| detection HN uses, this could actually hurt you.
|
| 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.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Ok, so OP asks where are all the Show HN's and all the comments
| are advertising people's past Show HN's instead of addressing why
| OP isn't finding many of them?
|
| Maybe I am overthinking this because I resent advertising
| disguised as something else.
| acover wrote:
| I think people are just replying with their experience. Who
| knows better about what happened to a project than the creator.
|
| It's not like the dude who made docker compose needs to
| advertise.
| holler wrote:
| I posted a Show HN about a new social news discussion site last
| December and it shows up in algolia. Also, still working on it!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25470672
| tyingq wrote:
| By "gone", I think they mean the project/website associated
| with the "Show HN" is gone/failed.
| [deleted]
| busymom0 wrote:
| Another Show HN I posted was my ResumeToPDF site which gives you
| a simple and effective template in the browser where you can fill
| the fields in and download the PDF of your resume. Unfortunately,
| it didn't get any votes :(
|
| Unlike many online resume builders which uses an "image" of the
| resume embedded in the PDF making it impossible for your resume
| to be read by many company's resume reading software, the PDF my
| site generates has actual text. Also my site does not collect
| your resume data and it NEVER leaves your device. The entire
| resume editing and PDF generation occurs locally on your device.
| The service DOES NOT contain ads, trackers and other such
| garbage.
|
| https://resumetopdf.com/
|
| Privacy Policy:
|
| https://resumetopdf.com/privacypolicy.html
| [deleted]
| open-source-ux wrote:
| I have mentioned this before in other discussions, but there in a
| large element of luck in whether a Show HN post finds success on
| HN, or rouses the interest of HN readers.
|
| 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.
| tjansen wrote:
| I have a couple of old projects, some also on HN, that I
| abandoned. Most of them had static sites, so I moved them to
| GitHub Pages, but didn't renew their domains.
|
| 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.
| personjerry wrote:
| The biggest problem with early startups is finding retention:
| Finding a niche that will stick and continue to use your product.
|
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| It could be that some of them simply moved to a different domain,
| and possibly changed their name. Or got absorbed into something
| else.
| i_like_apis wrote:
| Tangentially, I wish that more Show HN threads made it to the
| home page and stayed there longer.
|
| Show HN threads are probably my favorite feature of this
| community. The "Show" sort at the top is great, but it feels like
| there used to be more threads on the main page and more
| participation years ago (perhaps I am imagining that?)
| [deleted]
| mrmufungo wrote:
| Two years ago, I posted a Show HN about a music streaming service
| I've been working on for about four years at that point. It was
| my first serious project I've ever worked on.
|
| 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/
| debdut wrote:
| wow man! Really appreciate
| carlgreene wrote:
| Looks awesome! It doesn't appear to work in Safari :(, but
| Chrome works great
| mzfr wrote:
| what is your motivation behind it? I understand that you are
| working on this from quite sometime but similar service giants
| like spotify, (Apple|Amazon|Youtube) Music etc exists right? So
| how do you find the motivation to continue working on it. Also
| do you expect something out of it, like you are giving it your
| time & effort so what is the expectation out of it?
|
| Sorry, if my comment sounded rude. I'm just curious to know :)
| mrmufungo wrote:
| Hey, no problem!
|
| 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.
| jasfi wrote:
| Maybe because there are so many in progress, like mine: CxO
| Industries [1] is a SaaS I'm building to help founders create
| successful businesses. Creating a business is a very daunting
| task that many people fail at, especially the first time.
|
| 1: https://cxo.industries
| shadycuz wrote:
| I posted several and they never got any upvotes. My personal
| projects are here https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak
|
| I created a way to run GitHub actions on Jenkins.
|
| Brought IDE completion to Jenkins pipelines.
|
| Created a framework for testing AWS cloudformation without
| needing credentials or deploying resources.
| oauea wrote:
| > I created a way to run GitHub actions on Jenkins. > Brought
| IDE completion to Jenkins pipelines.
|
| That sounds very interesting. I looked through your github,
| which project are those part of?
| cm2012 wrote:
| 9/10 new businesses fail. Most Show HNs are not even businesses
| yet.
| gmurphy wrote:
| I did a Show HN eleven years ago for something called Dropmocks,
| which was an early use of the HTML5 drag and drop API to make
| image sharing convenient - it sat at the top of HN for that
| weekend, got Techcrunch coverage[0] etc, which made me feel nice.
|
| A few things happened after that:
|
| - A startup took the open source code and put it up a day or so
| later and got a few million dollars in funding to do image
| sharing, which made me feel bad at the time, but they later
| disappeared so it's fine
|
| - Larry Page got a bit annoyed that I didn't do it as a Google
| project, and Sundar/my boss had to explain that I was just a
| Chrome staff member who got a bit excited about a new API - both
| of them were correct
|
| - I had to panic-build a content moderation system from the
| airport on my honeymoon in response to some unsavory content
|
| - It eventually got to 3TB of stored data, which was fine until
| billing policy changes at my storage provider meant that my
| monthly costs would've gone from tens of dollars to hundreds or
| thousands of dollars
|
| - My day job was more fulfilling, so after a few years I shut it
| down
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/22/dropmocks-chrome-designer/
| kasbah wrote:
| Our electronics project sharing site https://kitspace.org is
| slowly but steadily improving since we did our Show HN [1]. We
| are working on a v2 [2]. Will do another Show HN once that's live
| :)
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16537374
|
| [2]: https://github.com/kitspace/kitspace-v2/
| acutesoftware wrote:
| I love seeing the experimental stuff and open source personal
| projects myself - they generally don't vanish after 6 months.
|
| 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.
| tracyhenry wrote:
| A week ago I posted one of the 10 most popular Show HNs:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28595967
|
| It's an app that aggregates book mentions on HN. Dev costs
| (server, gpu training etc) would be one concern going forward. I
| can't monetize the app to cover the cost due to my current visa
| status (even donations are tricky to handle). Nevertheless, I'm
| more than happy to maintain the site up given that many people on
| HN find it useful. :)
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