5 ms·

Ask HN: What successful startups started as "Show HN"?

158 points by sbisker 15y ago

I thought pulling together a list of startups who've done this would be interesting, to explore and perhaps better document the influence of HN on the startup community. We'll count both stand-alone startups who used Show HN in their launch / iterating strategy and side projects that have evolved into stand-alone startups, for the sake of discussion. Also, if your startup has gone through this: how do you feel using Show HN as a means of launching / gathering feedback my have helped or hurt your product?

pg 15y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- bradhe 15y ago
  zing!
- aspir 15y ago
  This is the best part of that whole link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 A good lesson that though someone could build it, most can't and if they could they'd rather not.
  - jfarmer 15y ago
    There's a really easy mental shortcut engineers or engineers who are aspiring entrepreneurs can make. It starts with a thought like: "Oh, I can do that by gluing together X, Y, and Z and configuring the foobaz widget to sync via the 802.11q network." Your second thought should be: "No normal person could do that, and even those who could probably wouldn't want to."
    - TeMPOraL 15y ago
      I remember that after "Find His Porn" website was featured on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301137) someone here presented an application that does the opposite - provides hidden, secure, encrypted drive - and that basically is TrueCrypt + some magic scripts that make it normal-user-friendly. Can't Google the link though.
joejohnson 15y ago
This community seems to need constant validation that it's worth doing start-ups and that some are, in fact, successful. I have to feel like if this were true, there wouldn't be this gaping insecurity.
- nostrademons 15y ago
  I think it's more that it's the people who are on the fence about doing a startup that are likely to be on a startup-focused forum talking about it. The ones who know it's a good idea are out there founding companies. And the ones who know it's a bad idea are at their 9-5 jobs and don't pay any attention to the startup scene. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by math. (Edit: BTW, Drew & Aston used to be regular posters on Hacker News, as did drusenko of Weebly, coffeemug of RethinkDB, lacker of Parse, danielha of Disqus, aaroniba of Etherpad, and a bunch of other YC founders I've forgotten. When they realized it was a good idea to start a company, they quit posting, got into YC, and started building their companies.)
  - bradhe 15y ago
    > The ones who know it's a good idea are out there founding companies. This is really really really true.
  - mindcrime 15y ago
    What about people who are actively founding a company, work a 9-5 job, and still post on HN? Are we just nuts, or what? :-)
    - amac 15y ago
      I would say yes and no. Bootstrapping in itself is not a bad thing I don't think, but at the same time, if you want to succeed with your venture, you have to fully commit at some stage.
- wtvanhest 15y ago
  I am interested in seeing the early stage. Just look at the Dropbox post and comments, it is incredible! I probably would have dismissed Dropbox if I had seen that, and look at them now. I hope this becomes a big list so I can read them all.
bradhe 15y ago
LayerVault comes to mind. Depends on your definition of success, but last I heard they're doing well. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2941589 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2941589
malandrew 15y ago
Quora http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146
- tokenadult 15y ago
  Quora What is the definition of "successful" for the purposes of this thread? I hear wildly differing accounts of whether Quora is successful or not, and I'm curious to hear from other HN participants whether or not they think Quora is a successful startup as they define success.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "What is the definition of "successful" for the purposes of this thread?" My thought would be "validated by attracting reasonable investment money by angels or VC's". In other words the idea would be good enough for someone to believe in it that wasn't friends or family or someone's own money. Of course that's only a starting definition. Someone who did "show hn" and then used their own money but gained either customer revenue or a significant user base would also be a success. (And what is "significant" or "reasonable" is also open to interpretation.)
  - pbreit 15y ago
    By almost any measure other than revenue, Quora has been extremely successful. Since it's YC, we can start with "building something people want".
6ren 15y ago
re "count both": It seems that many many YC startups have shown their work here, and they will swamp any others. From the title, I thought this would be about projects that began as "Show HN" (not began as YC startups, and then showed HN), and I find that idea, of sideprojects that became something greater, intriguing.
feint 15y ago
pen.io started here. Was noticed by the press and investors here.
seminal 15y ago
http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2901156 http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2901156
- whatusername 15y ago
  Just FYI (and for anyone else): The canonical URL is news.ycombinator.com and not hackerne.ws so: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156
vyrotek 15y ago
Oh the memories. I'm not going to put my startup in the Dropbox 'successful' bucket quite yet, but our multiple 'Ask HN' posts helped mold IActionable into what it is today. Its really interesting to look back and see how our company was formed by the feedback we received. Early on we had one idea which we called 'KaBadge' and we asked what everyone thought here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795952 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795952 This made us discover an even bigger need. Before people were going to think about karma/badge/point portability they were going to need systems to help award them. We switched gears really quick and went to work. It look a bit of time to convince ourselves that it would be possible. This was way before someone tossed out the term 'gamification' so it was really hard to do any research on this new market. Then we came back to the community with IActionable: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126780 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126780 Unfortunately at that time there was no way we could have moved to California to be part of YC. (families, babies, mortgages, etc) But, we were lucky enough to discover a local (Utah) incubator back in 2010. Eventually my friend and I convinced ourselves to quit our jobs: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1347464 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1347464 We quickly raised a seed round after the program and haven't looked back. Things are definitely still evolving but its been an awesome roller-coaster ride so far.
raheemm 15y ago
Visual Website Optimizer - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 Great idea to compile such a list.
- paraschopra 15y ago
  I also recently talked on Mixergy on how much "Show HN" helped me (special mention to @patio11) http://mixergy.com/chopra-visual-website-optimizer-interview/ http://mixergy.com/chopra-visual-website-optimizer-interview...
borski 15y ago
Heh, sbisker, don't you remember? We launched Tinfoil Security as a Show HN before we'd actually built anything and got great feedback. I'm not posting this as a measure of 'success' as much as a measure of a product that still exists, has raised venture funding, and is still trying to become a huge business. :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291944 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291944 https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com
- sbisker 15y ago
  ...ok, I think I just got told. I actually had forgotten we did that. :P
  - borski 15y ago
    Ha, didn't mean for it to come off as snarky, though I suppose I'm okay with that tone too. :)
usiegj00 15y ago
RightSignature: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510656 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510656 It was great feedback--comment #1 (1055 days ago) is in our app and boosted our conversion into solid double-digits: "You need a sample document, so people can test out the 'using your mouse to sign' part without signing up."
ayu 15y ago
Nobody cared about my Show HN, so I'd say it's lukewarm. And I'm pretty proud of my website, too. http://tuneup.fm/ http://tuneup.fm/
- duiker101 15y ago
  The idea is really nice! Maybe i would work a bit on the design, also maybe try not to focus on the same genres. This is something that is bugging me a lot with all these website like your, consle.fm etc... i really like theme but they focus on music kinds i am not interested in. I mean on your top bar there are at least 6 musics for "disco" and 1 pop/rock... this demotivates me because maybe i would love to see a "classical music" and "metal" etc... i think that if you expand your music horizonts you might expand your target audience and really stand out of the crawd of similar websites.
  - ayu 15y ago
    hey, I really appreciate the feedback and I'll see if I can add some more genres :)
- some1else 15y ago
  Nice! I'm working on something similar. Mail me if you're interested in joining forces
pud 15y ago
While it's no Dropbox, TinyLetter's launch was a Show HN. MailChimp bought it a few months ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829101 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829101
nader 15y ago
Our own: http://thinkery.me http://thinkery.me