Daniel Tenner

I'm not sure if @Bubs will ever read this, but I found this was a deeply interesting article, that hits close to home. If you are reading this - thank you.

There is so much to say on this subject, from various perspectives. Me, I'm stuck in Europe (offers-a-plenty, no chance for a visa). I am a founder of a start-up here, and I cannot complain about how it currently runs - but the things I've been through to get here ...

A lot about the start-up culture is simply different here in Europe - so maybe I am a little out of place among you. But what I believe is largely the same is the pressure, the stress, and the pretending. There are but few people who really understand what you are going through. "Why don't you just quit and get a (real) job ?" - if I had to raise a finger for how often I've gotten this response in dark times, I would be several hands short.

I believe there may be a need for some sort of chatter group for this. Maybe a tad unconventional, perhaps with a respected gate-keeper (like @Bubs) to check on people before they are let in (prevent moles), but once inside, everybody is anonymous to everybody else, and all conversation is group-private. You could be Mr Brown, I could be Mr Black - as long as I'm not Mr Pink. Perhaps it could have prevented what happened to those two founders mentioned in the article. I would be interested to join it, both for giving as well as receiving support. The good just writing something that the people who read it would…

Launching on HN is a risky business. Your product typically only does well if it exists within the HN target market. Don't ignore luck as an important factor. HN traffic also doesn't tend to convert that well. It's a little like Techcrunch - getting a post on TC doesn't guarantee your startup will be a success.

How to Launch on HackerNews

1) Understand

Read, contribute and build a reputation.

2) Research

Read swombat's Post: http://swombat.com/2011/1/13/how-to-get-your-startup-on-hacker-news

Read jacquesm's Unofficial Hacker News FAQ: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ

3) Time It

Typically, there are good times to submit on HN. However, take this with a pinch of salt as if too many people consult these resources, you'll find some stiff competition.

http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news-a-comprehensive-answer/

http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best-time-to-post-to-hackernews/

http://hnpickup.appspot.com/

4) Ask

Reach out to your community and ask for feedback on a post - before you post it. Make revisions and then ask your community/friends to check out the /newest page. If they feel like commenting or upvoting, they will.

5) Luck Out

Produce something of high enough quality that the HN community deems it worthy of the front page. Then enjoy the server thrashing around 10K-100K visitors

Marketing is a HUGE field, there's so much one could say about it, that it's hard to know where to start. So don't expect anyone to be able (or willing) to give you a cookie-cutter, step-by-step instructional guide, or to write a book here. There are tons of marketing books out there already. To be completely honest, you should probably consider going on Amazon.com, or to a used bookstore, and look for a cheap used copy of a generic "marketing 101" textbook and read through that for starters.

Beyond that, there are a ton of web based resources, and there are some HN regulars who have written quite a bit on the topic. Check out, for example, what swombat has to say:

http://swombat.com/founders_library

grep through that list for the marketing related ones.

Likewise, patio11 has written a lot about marketing.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/

You might want to look through some of the interviews and courses available on Mixergy.com as well. Even the stuff you have to pay for is well worth it. Personally, I recommend a Mixergy subscription.

Also look into the marketing related courses on sites like Udemy or Coursera, or stuff from MIT's OCW.

https://www.udemy.com/courses/search?q=marketing

You could also do worse than reading the stuff Seth Godin puts out. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

First, validate your idea. Do you think it's good, or do you have people outside your circle of friends and family saying it's good (and ideally, telling you they'd use/pay for it)?

If not, that's your first step: http://swombat.com/2010/12/20/how-to-validate-a-startup-idea

If you're beyond this, hire someone to make a minimum viable product (MVP). You can either pay somene's market price (odesk, elance, forrst and similar are okay places to find'em, although be careful in selecting/vetting the people), or offer them some partnership. In the latter case, keep in mind you're asking them to invest in your idea - you have to convince them (why) your idea is good and that you can execute on the business side (or whichever angle you'd be covering).

And whatever you do, please don't try the "do it for free, there will be more work coming" or "it's going to look good in your portfolio" route.

If you're going to talk of great companies, you can't leave out the two juggernauts of our time.

Neither Google nor Facebook started as a company.

Both search and social networks were written off as markets when the two current leaders entered the space.

I don't want to invoke another semantic wrestling championship between execution and ideas, but you have to give credit to Facebook for realising that social networks are not just about dating. It was their idea of exactly replicating offline social relationships on the web, executed to near perfection that made them successful. Great ideas are a combination of many small seemingly trivial good ideas. They do matter, otherwise one wouldn't know what to execute.

I'm afraid this article does rather poorly on the swombat-o-meter - http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advice-articles

I agree that software solutions can be leveraged for more financial success than (say) hardware solutions. I also decided to switch focus (at least temporarily) from what would have been a medical devices startup to software for that reason, among others.

But I think an entrepreneur's skill set is more of a limiting factor in the type of startup he/she can decide to pursue. After all there are problems that are potentially more lucrative than social networks but if you don't have the domain expertise or technical knowledge to solve those problems you may not even know they exist and if you did, would not be able to solve them.

There's a more extensive discussion on this here: http://swombat.com/2012/1/19/idea-reach-cofounder-myth