[HN Gopher] Marketing for Founders
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Marketing for Founders
Author : jimsojim
Score : 72 points
Date : 2026-03-14 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| elxr wrote:
| What perfect timing. Looks extremely well curated too.
| absoluteunit1 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| If it's a B2B - then yes, I would agree.
| wibbily wrote:
| An open letter: if you market your product by spamming Reddit et
| al. with fake stories (as this guide suggests), we:
|
| 1. can all tell
|
| 2. will not use your product
|
| Please stop polluting the global commons
|
| Signed everyone <3
| risyachka wrote:
| >> can all tell
|
| the reality is most users can't tell. you can see it under
| every ai post on reddit, unless it is creaming ai in every
| word.
| AstroBen wrote:
| Most of those replies are also AI
| philipp-gayret wrote:
| I don't condone it but the best marketing I've ever seen and
| which gets to the top of Reddit every week is a company that
| runs a paid IQ test website. They post some type of outrage
| bait and it always gets traction. Practically nobody in the
| comments can tell; they're all focused on how some imaginary
| character in an image is boasting about an IQ score of 99.
| jsunderland323 wrote:
| 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.
| pedalpete wrote:
| 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
| wek wrote:
| 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.
| redgridtactical wrote:
| 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.
| thorio wrote:
| Sometimes time doesn't allow that for multiple communities
| simultaneously, but you are right. Still I think a lot of
| online communities are drowning in AI slob diluting the well
| thought about stuff that would deserve the attention.
| Oras wrote:
| 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.
| thorio wrote:
| True story, yesterday I tried to get some feedback from an
| industry relevant subreddit for a real estate quick check
| calculation tool (automatically extracts listing data into
| calculation and enables sharing investment ideas). The pure
| mention of AI brought up a whole crowd of fed up bullies that
| talked it down as vibecoding trash - which it really isn't. All
| those places are flooded.
| dzonga wrote:
| this all just noise!!
|
| 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.
| fbrncci wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2026-03-14 23:00 UTC)