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Ask HN: How to Advertise to HN Users?

I am the CEO of a small startup named Userify (shameless plug: https://userify.com, innovative SSH key management, self-hosted and saas) and when we launched, a few mentions on Hacker News really kicked things off. Ten years and tons of adventures later, we've hit a bit of a growth wall. It seems like we're still valuable and useful to people and people still like to run their own servers/instances, so it seems like a marketing issue (and lots more well-funded competitors, of course!) Most HN's (and me) have always been a bit adverse to ads (especially bad/irrelevant ads), so most of us run ad-blockers. The people that we want to sell to are actually super technical. We're private and self-funded, so I want to look past the 'enterprise' customers and focus instead on the people who actually use the product. But this is really the problem: How do you advertise to the very smart and technical users when they run ad blockers? Or should we just give in and become a more enterprise-focused company?

DamonHD 3y ago
This can clearly be seen as a covert ad - I'm not complaining, but if you were not doing it on purpose then consider doing so. I find write-ups in technical articles/blogs by people who use stuff and find it valuable and can articulate why to be salient. Do you have a wide enough group of users with such output that you could suggest such write-ups from without twisting their arms too hard? The border with edvatorial is grey, but it's worth considering.
- jamiesonbecker 3y ago
  Fair point, and I appreciate this, but no, I'm intending it (mostly!) as an honest question.. How do we actually advertise to fellow HN'ers without irritating them. Most of our customers aren't journalists. They usually work in companies and don't write things like that, except for this sort of advertorial, https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/how-to-centralize-ssh-key-management-with-userify-and-aws-cloudformation/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/how-to-centralize-ssh-key-m... . Partner write-ups are in a safer space to me compared to the pro analysts (like Gartner and Forrester). Those will be talking mainly to the less technical users (personally I take paid write-ups with a grain of salt anyway.) We do have some great case studies from customers that we're going to put up soon, but those would be mainly for our website. (Does anyone actually read case studies at CIO or places like that?)
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    It's a bit weak to say this, but I hope that good case studies with good (above board!) SEO should surface in organic search results when people are looking for info. I aim for that in any case, but that may be a reason that I'm not a billionaire! B^>
LinuxBender 3y ago
How do you advertise to the very smart and technical users when they run ad blockers? In my opinion your site would need a really good technical write-up on a blog section that walks through how your application solves problems people have been handling manually so that it creates it's own compelling reasons even without having to describe the reasons in sales speak. In other words if the technical people here read your technical write-up they should already have ideas in their heads about how it solves management, audit, compliance and other facets of ssh private key management and public key trusts/identity mapping making their lives easier and freeing up time for them and their management teams. There should be a way to try out your application and ideally a step-by-step instruction for how to self host it. To increase adoption provide people with Ansible, Chef, Docker, Cloud init and other pre-baked scripts so they can just about drop it into an environment with minimal configuration, fire up the required servers and tie everything into it.
- jamiesonbecker 3y ago
  Excellent advice. Lots of technical stuff on there already, but you're right, a blog would be useful. Maybe content stuff like "Stupid SSH tricks" too.
  - LinuxBender 3y ago
    Another reason I suggest a blog is that you can have "sit downs" with people doing SOC1/SOC2 audits, PCI audits and the even more enjoyable FEDRAMP audits. Each blog could have a video showing the real audit and how your solution makes the account management pieces easier. This could be compelling not just to technical people but also to managers and directors that are obligated to pass these audits. So for example, a person changes teams or leaves the company. You make a change in your app and can show that their public keys are no longer mapped to specific shared service management accounts and their user accounts are effectively disabled as it pertains to ssh key trusts.
    - jamiesonbecker 3y ago
      > even more enjoyable FEDRAMP audits ha, that's excellent. This is a really good point. We have already helped a lot of companies going through their SOC2 or ISO 27001, so that's an excellent suggestion. Not sure if companies would want to share their audits on video, though! Maybe we should do more videos, too.
DoreenMichele 3y ago
Put this (or something like this) in your About section of your HN handle: CEO of userify.com (innovative SSH key management, self-hosted and saas) Then participate regularly.
- jamiesonbecker 3y ago
  Done, thanks Doreen! I'm mostly a lurker but btw really appreciated your comments and insights over the years, and your story is very inspirational.
ipaddr 3y ago
Sponsor tutorials to win over those in learning mode. They are the group who is open to change and willing to try/learn about new products. For the busy experienced developer try solving a problem using your tool and spread on hn, twitter, discord, github, reddit. The problem you have is the market has caught up to you. To continue to do well you need to become a marketing company instead of a pure leading edge tech company
hayst4ck 3y ago
Tech blogs are the standard way tech companies advertise to engineers. You must understand a tech blog is not meant for you to "tell" tech blogs exist for you to "show." If you think of your blog as an advertisement with technical info you will fail. If you think of your blog as a public display of technologies and processes that people might find useful or relevant to their work, it can succeed. After tech blogs, getting other people to mention you or display artifacts related to your company seems valuable. Showing up at things like DefCon or other conferences and interacting with people in good faith seems productive. I think the engineer crowd is a crowd that will smell bullshit and recoil, but if you're not a pest and show (not tell) that you can reduce workload, I think all of us would like less problems to think about.
- superq 3y ago
  It's good advice to show, not tell.
Leftium 3y ago
A recent article explained how to effectively use information marketing to reach the HN audience (and beyond). How to hack Hacker News (and consistently hit the front page): https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/35912649 https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/35912649

DamonHD 3y ago

This can clearly be seen as a covert ad - I'm not complaining, but if you were not doing it on purpose then consider doing so. I find write-ups in technical articles/blogs by people who use stuff and find it valuable and can articulate why to be salient. Do you have a wide enough group of users with such output that you could suggest such write-ups from without twisting their arms too hard? The border with edvatorial is grey, but it's worth considering.

jamiesonbecker 3y ago
Fair point, and I appreciate this, but no, I'm intending it (mostly!) as an honest question.. How do we actually advertise to fellow HN'ers without irritating them. Most of our customers aren't journalists. They usually work in companies and don't write things like that, except for this sort of advertorial, https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/how-to-centralize-ssh-key-management-with-userify-and-aws-cloudformation/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/how-to-centralize-ssh-key-m... . Partner write-ups are in a safer space to me compared to the pro analysts (like Gartner and Forrester). Those will be talking mainly to the less technical users (personally I take paid write-ups with a grain of salt anyway.) We do have some great case studies from customers that we're going to put up soon, but those would be mainly for our website. (Does anyone actually read case studies at CIO or places like that?)
- DamonHD 3y ago
  It's a bit weak to say this, but I hope that good case studies with good (above board!) SEO should surface in organic search results when people are looking for info. I aim for that in any case, but that may be a reason that I'm not a billionaire! B^>

LinuxBender 3y ago

How do you advertise to the very smart and technical users when they run ad blockers? In my opinion your site would need a really good technical write-up on a blog section that walks through how your application solves problems people have been handling manually so that it creates it's own compelling reasons even without having to describe the reasons in sales speak. In other words if the technical people here read your technical write-up they should already have ideas in their heads about how it solves management, audit, compliance and other facets of ssh private key management and public key trusts/identity mapping making their lives easier and freeing up time for them and their management teams. There should be a way to try out your application and ideally a step-by-step instruction for how to self host it. To increase adoption provide people with Ansible, Chef, Docker, Cloud init and other pre-baked scripts so they can just about drop it into an environment with minimal configuration, fire up the required servers and tie everything into it.

jamiesonbecker 3y ago
Excellent advice. Lots of technical stuff on there already, but you're right, a blog would be useful. Maybe content stuff like "Stupid SSH tricks" too.
- LinuxBender 3y ago
  Another reason I suggest a blog is that you can have "sit downs" with people doing SOC1/SOC2 audits, PCI audits and the even more enjoyable FEDRAMP audits. Each blog could have a video showing the real audit and how your solution makes the account management pieces easier. This could be compelling not just to technical people but also to managers and directors that are obligated to pass these audits. So for example, a person changes teams or leaves the company. You make a change in your app and can show that their public keys are no longer mapped to specific shared service management accounts and their user accounts are effectively disabled as it pertains to ssh key trusts.
  - jamiesonbecker 3y ago
    > even more enjoyable FEDRAMP audits ha, that's excellent. This is a really good point. We have already helped a lot of companies going through their SOC2 or ISO 27001, so that's an excellent suggestion. Not sure if companies would want to share their audits on video, though! Maybe we should do more videos, too.

DoreenMichele 3y ago

Put this (or something like this) in your About section of your HN handle: CEO of userify.com (innovative SSH key management, self-hosted and saas) Then participate regularly.

jamiesonbecker 3y ago
Done, thanks Doreen! I'm mostly a lurker but btw really appreciated your comments and insights over the years, and your story is very inspirational.

ipaddr 3y ago

Sponsor tutorials to win over those in learning mode. They are the group who is open to change and willing to try/learn about new products. For the busy experienced developer try solving a problem using your tool and spread on hn, twitter, discord, github, reddit. The problem you have is the market has caught up to you. To continue to do well you need to become a marketing company instead of a pure leading edge tech company

hayst4ck 3y ago

Tech blogs are the standard way tech companies advertise to engineers. You must understand a tech blog is not meant for you to "tell" tech blogs exist for you to "show." If you think of your blog as an advertisement with technical info you will fail. If you think of your blog as a public display of technologies and processes that people might find useful or relevant to their work, it can succeed. After tech blogs, getting other people to mention you or display artifacts related to your company seems valuable. Showing up at things like DefCon or other conferences and interacting with people in good faith seems productive. I think the engineer crowd is a crowd that will smell bullshit and recoil, but if you're not a pest and show (not tell) that you can reduce workload, I think all of us would like less problems to think about.

superq 3y ago
It's good advice to show, not tell.

Leftium 3y ago

A recent article explained how to effectively use information marketing to reach the HN audience (and beyond). How to hack Hacker News (and consistently hit the front page): https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/35912649 https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/35912649