Creator Here: Cheers Andy. Appreciated
264 karma · joined February 2, 2017
"Do you wanna come Harry!?" "Err, I'm going to give this one a miss"(x300)
Then they'd leave and it was bliss. Peace and quiet. Just me. And whatever the hell I wanted to do.
I could never really put my emotion into thoughts. But the joy of missing out was pretty much it.
"Missing out" is now the status quo. And I'm not sure that's a good thing. Sometimes I feel like a should try more stuff, but do it on my own terms. I'm sure I'll get there.
Thanks for writing. I intend on checking out Svend's book.
Six years after the launch of Le Tour, Italian sports paper, Gazzetta dello Sport organises the first Giro D’Italia and following their success Spanish paper Informaciones organises La Vuelta Ciclista a España.
The three largest cycling stage races in the world today all began as “side projects” aimed at increasing circulation. Decided to write about it
So I decided to write about it
From what I know his audience is quite "hardcore", and there is hardly many substitute "Indie Hacker esque" stories out there.
I see a lot of sites loading in 3rd party scripts such as Intercom, Hotjar, Segment etc ... (killing their Time to Interactive metric)
Once I found such an elegant solution (waiting for a scroll event before loading) I thought it was worth sharing.
1. Don't launch straight away. Having a small following of “fans” on launch day goes a long way. Product Hunt multiplies current momentum.
2. The goal of a Product Hunt launch is not upvotes. 100 upvotes and 100 email sign-ups is more valuable than 1000 upvotes and a site which can’t convert anyone.
3. Schedule launch for 12:01 AM PST. Make gif. Write good first comment.
4. Product Hunt launch is the day your karma comes full circle. The support you get is proportional to the support you've given throughout the year.
5. Don't overshare. Don't ask for upvotes. I can assure, you this stuff does more harm than good.
Contrary to what you're saying one of the main lessons in the case study is NOT to use a clever title. To quote, "bleed out all the superfluousness".
Regards to the Nike story I never extrapolate back from this or generalise from this title. To quote, "In spite of this success, I’ll be the first to admit that I am pretty clueless when it comes to Hacker News."
And regards to your final paragraph, again, I couldn't agree with you more. And that is in fact the whole point of the conclusion. To quote,
"But to call him a great marketer I think misses the point. Adriaan is a great Hacker News user. He understands the intricacies of the forum, offers thoughtful insight, and is never pushy with his business. The naked eye doesn’t see self-promotion. It sees someone passionate about privacy. He isn't a marketer on Hacker News, he's a Hacker News user on Hacker News.
Once you start hanging with your perfect audience, you don't have to try so hard."
The reason why Adriaan is so successful is because he is intellectually curious. And that he isn't writing articles drummed up by a group of content marketers trying to game the system.
My own experience certainly backs this up. The two case studies I've submitted that reached the front page of Hacker News both took were purely done out of my own interest.
Good points and I do agree. I honestly think we're arguing from the same side. One of the points the case study makes is to not overthink and think about "marketing".
To quote the last line of the case study: "He isn't a marketer on Hacker News, he's a Hacker News user on Hacker News."
"The point is that once you start hanging with your perfect audience, conventional marketing goes out the window. You don't have to try so hard.
Find the place where your tribe hangs out. Show up, help people out, talk about what you're doing, and the rest will take care of itself."
Hacker News is useless, unless you blog / product is aimed at the Hacker News archetype.
Choose the correct title and your startup can be projected to thousands. Write a thoughtful comment and you can make 20 sales. Ask the right question and you can end up with a Silicon Valley job (that actually happened)!
I came across Simple Analytics [1] a privacy-focused startup which pulls in huge traffic from HN. Fortunately all their traffic was all "/open" so I could compare traffic spikes with their founders [2] Hacker News activity and understand what really does works on Hacker News.
Was it all worth it? Who knows!
There's several independent variables (money / trial and error / twitter following / coding ability etc ...)
this clickbait paper makes it sound like age is the independent variable. when age is merely CORRELATED with these independent variables. Age itself is of little importance.
You may as well say:
"A person who has already started 5 startups is 4.9X more likely to found a successful startup than a person has never founded a startup before"
Google "Multicollinearity" before you vend BS clickbait.
kanye said it.
"we are the new slaves."
we all started out as gardeners. but pretty soon gardening is too much effort. they sit on their ass to long and before they know it they become part of the garden. we are all shrubbery. but we are happy. shrubs don't know that there shrubs. Once in a while the gardener swings by, feeds us, waters us, tells us we are doing a good job, then he goes to jerk off.