How my startup got to #1 on both Product Hunt and Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

How my startup got to #1 on both Product Hunt and Hacker News

levels.io

59 pointspieterhg23 comments

With these "I had a wild overnight viral success, here's what I did" posts there is always secret sauce that the author leaves out of the equation.

I just love that in an article titled "How I got my startup to #1 on both Product Hunt and Hacker News by accident” that the author never actually answers the question properly. Chances are he doesn't really know why it went to #1, or is avoiding the truth to make it seem like it was just sheer sweat that pushed it over the edge.

The factors that pushed authors of these "how my thing became an overnight hit" posts to the top are pretty cut and dry. The winning combo was typically that they A) have already built up a key early distribution network of viral influencers via twitter a blog etc and B) that they have an uncanny knack for nailing down sticky, well designed, well positioned products in an exciting niche - a skill that for most people doesn't come naturally.

I know of at least 3 people who tried to make similar products that never got a lick of attention. Why? A) They have no audience and a social network with zero influencers and B) Their products we clunky/ugly and kind of sucked.

Just wish more of these posts stopped beating around bush and misleading junior entrepreneurs into thinking that simply building something is enough to score a hit. You need to have an audience to distribute it to, and you need to be really killer at nailing down product / market fit early on. That's the secret sauce.

I see your point, but to be fair most of the visitors simply came from submitting it to Hacker News and Product Hunt. The rest followed suit from there.

>> "You need to have an audience to distribute it to"

If you've read the article the take away should be this isn't the case. He used the audience available on ProductHunt and HN to make it go viral. It was also a really useful product.

This confuses correlation and causation. Getting to #1 of any link aggregator is pure luck and there's no way to game it. Many site with the same production values as the OP's are submitted every day yet get no votes.

Staying at #1 for an extended period of time is a related but slightly different story.

That being said, the massive decline after the spike is a good example why getting to the top of HN isn't a make-or-break event for startups.

>> Getting to #1 of any link aggregator is pure luck

I disagree. There is luck involved but you can increase your chances. e.g. the time at which you post is important. Is anyone on the site or are they in bed?

I will admit that logic is not incorrect because I was the one who made that very claim: http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-front-page.png

The variation, however, is minimal between the timeslots. That image didn't also look into the game-theoric implications of other successful posts during that time.

> Getting to #1 of any link aggregator is pure luck

Then you could submit a random page every millisecond and be on #1 with one of them all the time.

Wouldn't you be banned before you got to number #1?

That's insane, I would describe getting to the top of a news aggregator as almost zero luck. Great product, great marketing, #1 no problem.

I agree. I have seen links top rated with questionable, even old and outdated content. Once it's in the upper ranks it seems to attract the sheep crowd - commenting and then the prophecy starts fulfilling itself... ;-)

So it dosent matter if product is viral, unique and possibly game changing? Is becoming successfully also pure luck? What else in your opinion is pure luck?

I agree that some submissions are lucky to get to the top. But stating most submissions or all of them is just luck is just nonsense.

"Viral and game-changing" is only determined in hindsight, not in a Show HN.

Not to be pedantic, but the notion of launching "12 startups in 12 months" is ridiculous.

I am sure you mean "12 apps in 12 months".

A startup is a company that is positioned for high-growth (both in headcount and user count). See PG's post on Startups.

What I have seen here are apps.

Please don't mistake me, what the OP has done is pretty cool and hard in and of itself. Getting all of that attention for all of your projects is no easy feat.

But 4 startups it is not.

Love these types of 'behind the scenes' articles showing the whole story including decision making process, data, graphs, etc. Great job on both the article and NomadList! :)

Fantastic write-up. Great to see the steps level's took to validate demand with minimal effort and ways he maximized the the opportunity once it started to take off.

For nomadlist, it uses google doc backend with a decent frontend. Can someone point to an example code that would help do that ?

This is the code in PHP:

http://pastebin.com/QzE1pNQ2

Is there a way to do this with JS ?

Server got crushed by HN, getting it back up :)

Up again, phew! That was close...

Nice site (nomadlist.io) and thanks for the blog post.

I noticed the "Level of safety" of the city "Salzburg" is "very high" in your spreadsheet but the CSV parser doesn't recognize it (shows zero stars, instead of 5). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y6TNGpUkoCQzLtATw4Le...

Thanks, fixed the data :)

The revenue per price point graph looks like a really cool and useful data visualization technique. Thanks for sharing.

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