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You are right on many levels, and I know it. > But I would suggest to every engineer to consider Chesterton’s fence. I agree. In fact, I believe I have consi

You are right on many levels, and I know it. > But I would suggest to every engineer to consider Chesterton’s fence. I agree. In fact, I believe I have considered Chesterton's Fence; I have a plan. I'd like your opinion on my plan. > Making something people want enough to pay for is very difficult. Yes, absolutely. To fight this, I have spent years, 3.5 years, figuring out what people hate about build systems, and I have designed mine to address those. While that doesn't guarantee success, I think it may improve my odds. Do you agree? > That is: builders who prioritize marketing outcompete those who prioritize engineering quality. Yes, and it sucks. I hate marketers. I hate marketing. I hate the fact that I'm going to do it. But I have to. So my marketing with be focused on giving people something for just paying attention. > Engineering excellence can sometimes be used successfully as a form of marketing in itself and you could well pull this off, as your content is super engaging and well-written. Thank you for your compliment! I hope so, and my plan is to emphasize this. I'm going to post four articles on HN, each a week apart, and each will be designed to give readers something substantial, with a blurb about marketing at the end that will be clearly marked as marketing. * The first will be new FOSS licenses designed to better protect contributors from legal liability. * The second will be a post on language design and psychology. * The third will be a deep dive into Turing-completeness and what it means. * The fourth will be the source code as a Show HN, along with an offer for early adopters. > Or is it because the products that win in the market prioritize… winning in the market, and all their competitors that don’t prioritize that for whatever reason fall by the wayside? It's awful, but you are right. So this marketing push is all I will do for four weeks: preparing and posting, and responding to comments. This is when I will "prioritize winning in the market." Does this have a chance of working?

danenania 3y ago
"Does this have a chance of working?" It's a start for sure. But personally I'd suggest changing your mindset a bit from the idea that you'll come out of the code cave for a month to grit your teeth and do marketing. Granted, this is much better than just staying in the cave. But really to run a successful business I think you need to accept at a deep level that marketing, making money, and growing the business is now your main job, and you will permanently need to spend at least as many thought cycles on that as you do on programming. To wit, while posting those articles and a Show HN sounds like a good plan and you should definitely do that, what will you do if they all fall flat and get no traction? It's a distinct possibility, and I hope you won't just give up. I'd think more about what you're going to do every week for the next year to get users rather than putting all your chips on an HN launch that may or may not pan out. Even if you do rock the HN launch, you're probably going to have the "trough of sorrow"[1] to contend with after, so I'd think more about how you can make marketing a repeatable part of your rhythm in the long run. 1 - https://andrewchen.com/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the-trough-of-sorrow/ https://andrewchen.com/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the...
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  Thank you so much for your answer! > while posting those articles and a Show HN sounds like a good plan and you should definitely do that, what will you do if they all fall flat and get no traction? You got me. I was planning on giving up. :P I am in a place where the only cost to switching projects and trying again in three years is the opportunity cost, so because I'm bad at constant marketing, that's what I was going to do if I got zero traction. If I got only some traction, I'd weigh my options. I was only going to worry about long-term weekly marketing if the launch went well enough. Because I'll be frank: I have no idea how to do constant marketing that doesn't bother people or waste their time. If I would waste their time, I'd rather just throw my own time away and switch projects. > Even if you do rock the HN launch, you're probably going to have the "trough of sorrow"[1] to contend with after Good blog post, and yes, I agree. I am expecting the trough as I build up the MVP.
  - danenania 3y ago
    The issue with your strategy imho is that failing to get traction with an HN launch is not that much of a negative signal. Getting to the front page is a bit of a crapshoot and not achieving it doesn't necessarily mean no one is interested in your product--it could mean you got unlucky or just need to iterate on your messaging. If you haven't gotten it in many users' hands yet, it might be a good idea to try recruiting like 50-100 users first, either one-by-one through email reachouts or in smaller communities where it's less hit-or-miss, like niche subreddits. If some of these users like the product and stick with it, start giving you feature requests, etc., that tells you that you're on to something. Conversely, if you can't get even a small group of users to try it and stick with it using that approach, it's much more of a negative signal than a failed HN launch and probably indicates that something needs to change. Whatever route you decide to take, I wish you the best with it! Also: "I have no idea how to do constant marketing that doesn't bother people or waste their time. If I would waste their time, I'd rather just throw my own time away and switch projects." That's noble of you, but I would cut yourself some slack. Ideally you would market in a way where you don't bother people or waste their time, but getting users often requires trying things where you risk getting close to that line. Sometimes you might cross over it, but that's just something to learn from. Trying to market a product while never bothering anyone the least little bit is a bit like trying to be a comedian without offending anyone or to find a romantic partner without enduring some awkward dates. I think it just goes with the territory.
jimbokun 3y ago
I think if you succeed, it will be because other developers are investing in you personally. Because they like what you write and how you think, and thus trust you to write good software. I think patio11 is someone who has used a similar marketing strategy to great success. People hire him because of the quality of his writing demonstrating his understanding.
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  I think you are absolutely right. I also think I can't replicate patio11's success! He's a much better marketer and writer than me.
pdimitar 3y ago
> While that doesn't guarantee success, I think it may improve my odds. Do you agree? Not your parent commenter but I wouldn't agree, no. Build systems are one of these things most companies want to setup once and want to never deal with them again, and only do so if they have zero choice. `earthly.dev` had an article some weeks ago that addressed why one of their products never took off even though it's really good and addresses grievances in the space. The TL;DR was that existing customers of other CI/CD tools did not want to migrate to a new system, especially since it doesn't offer a migration from their existing solution. Here it is, hope you find it insightful: https://earthly.dev/blog/shutting-down-earthly-ci/ https://earthly.dev/blog/shutting-down-earthly-ci/

danenania 3y ago

"Does this have a chance of working?" It's a start for sure. But personally I'd suggest changing your mindset a bit from the idea that you'll come out of the code cave for a month to grit your teeth and do marketing. Granted, this is much better than just staying in the cave. But really to run a successful business I think you need to accept at a deep level that marketing, making money, and growing the business is now your main job, and you will permanently need to spend at least as many thought cycles on that as you do on programming. To wit, while posting those articles and a Show HN sounds like a good plan and you should definitely do that, what will you do if they all fall flat and get no traction? It's a distinct possibility, and I hope you won't just give up. I'd think more about what you're going to do every week for the next year to get users rather than putting all your chips on an HN launch that may or may not pan out. Even if you do rock the HN launch, you're probably going to have the "trough of sorrow"[1] to contend with after, so I'd think more about how you can make marketing a repeatable part of your rhythm in the long run. 1 - https://andrewchen.com/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the-trough-of-sorrow/ https://andrewchen.com/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the...

gavinhoward 3y ago
Thank you so much for your answer! > while posting those articles and a Show HN sounds like a good plan and you should definitely do that, what will you do if they all fall flat and get no traction? You got me. I was planning on giving up. :P I am in a place where the only cost to switching projects and trying again in three years is the opportunity cost, so because I'm bad at constant marketing, that's what I was going to do if I got zero traction. If I got only some traction, I'd weigh my options. I was only going to worry about long-term weekly marketing if the launch went well enough. Because I'll be frank: I have no idea how to do constant marketing that doesn't bother people or waste their time. If I would waste their time, I'd rather just throw my own time away and switch projects. > Even if you do rock the HN launch, you're probably going to have the "trough of sorrow"[1] to contend with after Good blog post, and yes, I agree. I am expecting the trough as I build up the MVP.
- danenania 3y ago
  The issue with your strategy imho is that failing to get traction with an HN launch is not that much of a negative signal. Getting to the front page is a bit of a crapshoot and not achieving it doesn't necessarily mean no one is interested in your product--it could mean you got unlucky or just need to iterate on your messaging. If you haven't gotten it in many users' hands yet, it might be a good idea to try recruiting like 50-100 users first, either one-by-one through email reachouts or in smaller communities where it's less hit-or-miss, like niche subreddits. If some of these users like the product and stick with it, start giving you feature requests, etc., that tells you that you're on to something. Conversely, if you can't get even a small group of users to try it and stick with it using that approach, it's much more of a negative signal than a failed HN launch and probably indicates that something needs to change. Whatever route you decide to take, I wish you the best with it! Also: "I have no idea how to do constant marketing that doesn't bother people or waste their time. If I would waste their time, I'd rather just throw my own time away and switch projects." That's noble of you, but I would cut yourself some slack. Ideally you would market in a way where you don't bother people or waste their time, but getting users often requires trying things where you risk getting close to that line. Sometimes you might cross over it, but that's just something to learn from. Trying to market a product while never bothering anyone the least little bit is a bit like trying to be a comedian without offending anyone or to find a romantic partner without enduring some awkward dates. I think it just goes with the territory.

jimbokun 3y ago

I think if you succeed, it will be because other developers are investing in you personally. Because they like what you write and how you think, and thus trust you to write good software. I think patio11 is someone who has used a similar marketing strategy to great success. People hire him because of the quality of his writing demonstrating his understanding.

gavinhoward 3y ago
I think you are absolutely right. I also think I can't replicate patio11's success! He's a much better marketer and writer than me.

pdimitar 3y ago

> While that doesn't guarantee success, I think it may improve my odds. Do you agree? Not your parent commenter but I wouldn't agree, no. Build systems are one of these things most companies want to setup once and want to never deal with them again, and only do so if they have zero choice. `earthly.dev` had an article some weeks ago that addressed why one of their products never took off even though it's really good and addresses grievances in the space. The TL;DR was that existing customers of other CI/CD tools did not want to migrate to a new system, especially since it doesn't offer a migration from their existing solution. Here it is, hope you find it insightful: https://earthly.dev/blog/shutting-down-earthly-ci/ https://earthly.dev/blog/shutting-down-earthly-ci/