Here is an idea for HN. Once a month, a list of 10 newly-launched startups can be placed here on HN for people to discover. This will avoid startups feeling guilty or shameful for using HN to promote themselves.
I can create a Google form and curate the startups for each month.
If anybody else likes this idea, share your thoughts, upvote (so others can see) and we can make it happen.
As someone whose startup failed, and someone to whom marketing is a dark and mysterious art, this is a problem I know and understand well. And my advice to such startups would be: damn well hit the submit button. Sacrifice your sentimentalities, your fear of ridicule, your rightly held belief that the HN community will likely ignore you or worse ridicule you, and just get the word out now.
Rather than curating a list of 10 worthy startups, we should all browse /newest and give honest, positive feedback to startups that dare to climb upon the HN pyre.
Agreed. I've submitted Fogbeam blog posts here before, and I name-drop my startup (Fogbeam Labs) quite often, but prettty much only when there's a reasonable "in context" reason to do so. The worst thing that's ever happened? I've been silently ignored. The best thing that's happened? We've had blog posts make the front-page and generate tons of traffic to our site, and I've gotten a few emails asking about, or commenting on, what we're doing.
So yeah, I would say don't be afraid to engage in a little bit of self-promotion here. But I'd argue that there's a line between that and outright spamming the site, and I try to avoid crossing the line into the latter.
The reason why I want to have a curation process and identify a limited number of startups is so that it doesn't become another "list". It will also give readers incentive to try out 2/3 of the 10, which will give a ~30% chance of a signup for the startups on the list.
Is there someone I can contact at HN to ask for an increase in my char limit for posting?