All startups need is distribution | Hacker News Reader

All startups need is distribution

9 pointsrelaxfolio9 comments

We don't need capital, we don't need technical co-founders (that's Claude now), and we don't need non-technical co-founders. We just need a partner who can bring in traffic.

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I'd say solve it organically first. If your product is B2C, then posting volume on Instagram works. There are plenty of tools out there. Again, it's quite tricky cz you might get a huge audience but they don't buy, and you get a smaller one and they buy.

For B2B, I would say use LinkedIn, Reddit, Hacker News itself. Collaborate. Though distribution would be futile if no one is paying attention, cz it's easy to get content distributed these days cz of AI, you know. What is difficult is building trust.

So, building trust is like building a brand. A slow, painful process which no one is gonna do, but if you do it thinking of the longer term, you will win bigger. Start with LinkedIn content if you are into B2B. Since I write for tech founders, focus on positioning. That's it. Do it consistently for like 30-50 days, then we talk later.

I am trying to solve this organically without spending any money on ads, and my experimentation was proven corrrect and got my first 50 users from Reddit and Linkedin, but the issue is now that Reddit shadowbanned my account XD. But other channels are working fine, hoping I can release it soon here and PH.

Most techs are not salespeople. Most developers couldn’t sell ice in the Kalahari. A lot of our most talented code-slingers are so neurospicy that they have legitimate difficulties interacting with muggles on their own level.

So yeah, traffic is the one thing we nearly always do a spectacular faceplant on.

No that's not what you need. When you get someone to distribute the feedback will be that what you built sucks. Figuring out distribution is your hardest job.

Anyone want to partner? If you're deploying AI in consequential interactions or workflows I'd love to chat :)

Https://lyfe.ninja/

Friend, what do you think the capital is used for?

Ability for startups to get their product into Homebrew

Partners can be tricky, particularly if you don't know them. My experience has often been that it's possible to find venture capitalists to push a business forward, but that's what you're saying you don't want. Besides, what they typically want is an already successful startup so that business potential is already apparent. Low risk investment.

Sorry to start out so negative, but from here, what are reasonable alternatives? There are sites where you can offer some kinds of software. You can even sell on amazon. Outside the box innovative solutions? Maybe someone will look at stats and have AI evaluate startups in a way that filters to some set of potentially successful products and be willing to enter such a risky market.

This is actually the hardest problem most startups face, the desperation spawned services like Product Hunt capitalizing on founders wanting success to be as simple as submitting a link to HN, Reddit, PH, etc.

The worst thing is practically everything you do in this space is going to fail, you can't solve it by adding features, nobody cares about your blog or self-promo posts, the only thing that really works is pouring money into advertising and that's a whole field of expertise too.

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