

TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup? - paulitex
http://www.prlambert.com/2013/01/29/tc-vs-hn/

======
sync
Your HN post[0] led to a blog post: <http://www.learndot.com/findings/how-to-
name-your-startup/>

Your TechCrunch post[1] led directly to your homepage.

With that in mind, we can't trust these numbers at all.

[0]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4779410>

[1]: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/learndot-launches-its-
learn...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/learndot-launches-its-learning-
platform-for-corporate-universities/)

~~~
paulitex
Numbers are always trustworthy if they're accurate. You just need to right
context to interpret them in. These numbers are straight from Google
Analytics, and you are correct that one was a direct link and the other was
via TC. I say this in the article.

This is a real world scenario. Many people ask how much traffic we got from
being on TechCrunch. This is just data, take it as you want. I do my best to
explain the main caveats, including the one you pointed out. There are many.

~~~
ig1
They're untrustworthy to answer the question "TechCrunch vs. Hacker News:
Which is a better front page to launch your startup?"

~~~
djt
Having said that, HN is definitely the best site to get your TC vs HN blog
post to the front page

------
dmor
There is one major flaw in this thinking. He says LTV should be at least 4x
cost of customer acquisition (CAC) and that he would pay $60 for a warm lead.
So let's assume he follows this and 4 x $60 is his LTV = $240. With 22 leads
from TechCrunch the total potential value of those leads is 22 x $240, not 22
x $60

TC leads were potentially worth $5,520 if fully converted (not $1,320 - which
is the _cost_ he's willing to pay for equivalent leads)

Of course, very rarely do all conversions occur but I think when doing
marketing it is important to know the fully converted value of each channel
(in this case PR) so that you can figure out how much to spend. In general
$5,000 of potential revenue (or TCV) is my minimum bar for a PR story, for
example, so this story makes the cut just barely. I think the TC traffic they
got was pretty abysmal, probably would be worth it to hire PR next time since
they've got a B2B product that can afford $60 per warm lead

Conversion rates can change and constantly be improved on the product/sales
side (public pricing, free trial, free + premium features for upsell, etc) but
I've found that often growing the TCV (total converted value) of the channel
is more worthwhile than trying to optimize in the early days when fixing
conversion is harder than just finding attention opportunities. If you can
find channels that consistently drive you leads worth 10-20x CAC and continue
opening the channel more (getting more TC stories for example) you can figure
out where its limit it.

This topic has been on my mind a lot, needs a whole blog post on
DistributionHacks to dig into channel methodology and running multiple
experiments to find the TCV of leads for each, stack rank, and implement
system for scaling that as a business machine with predictable inputs and
outputs --- but I haven't had time. Maybe this weekend.

~~~
paulitex
Sorry about the confusion. When I say I will pay $60 for a warm lead, that's
assuming a number of them will not convert. Our LTV is in the 1000s, but
another part of the cost of acquisition is the time on the phone to close the
deal.

It's more like this: \- We'll pay $300 bucks for 5 warm leads to hand off to
sales. \- Sales will work the leads to close, spending another $200 of time.
One of them will close. \- We'll get a customer with a LTV of greater than
$2000, for $500. LTV >= 4x total CAC.

In valuing the leads from TechCrunch, it's a mistake to assume they'll all
close (in which case their value is beyond $5520), we have to value what they
actually are: potential. We have to discount the risk. That value, is about
$60, so all 22 are worth $1320.

I like the optimism though. :)

And you're right it's not a great payoff overall. ~$3000 isn't a great ROI for
the effort that went into the launch. There were other channels as well beyond
HN and TC, but I wanted to keep the story focused on these two.

We've been testing more channels since and there's lot of data there as well
and so, so much more to learn. Looking forward to your post!

~~~
dmor
I figured your LTV was probably much higher given what you're doing. That 4x
CAC thing is really intended for consumer companies I think.

The reason this methodology matters is that when you have a marketer trying to
figure out how to deploy a substantial amount of capital against business
goals they've got to break it down by channel. And this common misconception
is one of the most painful hurdles to get over with startup management teams
who tend to be spending adverse even when the marketer finds a channel she
wants to exploit the hell out of.

Marketing, as a function, deals in potential. If I can spend $1 to get you $10
of potential, and you (being sales or self-service conversion funnel) close
20% of that then we are a fucking awesome company :)

------
philwelch
What front page do your customers read? Unless all you're doing is selling to
Silicon Valley, neither TechCrunch nor Hacker News are necessarily going to be
the answer.

~~~
davidw
I've gotten LiberWriter on the front page here a few times, and the number of
new customers was astounding:

Absolutely zero.

The typical LW customer is not at all tech-savvy, which is pretty much the
polar opposite of your average HN user. I get _far_ more mileage out of
hitting forums where writers actually congregate.

Not to complain, mind you, I posted to talk about aspects of LiberWriter that
I found interesting that might be worthwhile for others, not to troll for
business.

~~~
lttlrck
It would be great if you could distill:

"Most authors say that more than 80% of their eBook sales are via Amazon."

down to one metric. 'most' can be manipulated to be almost any value... just
ask cats.

------
rdl
I went with a TC article for the specific reason of getting an HN post out of
it.

This led to waiting an extra week or two to launch, was generally a hassle,
etc. And our article hit in the afternoon on the west coast, vs. at a
reasonable hour on the east coast.

In the future I'd probably just post directly to HN. Getting to pick the
_time_ of the HN post is probably worth more than the incremental value of TC.
TC might be worthwhile for funding announcements, but I'd never use it for a
product announcement.

------
ig1
Given that the two links pointed to completely different pages it's hard to
draw any conclusion. It's well known that landing page has a significant
impact on conversion, so even if the same audience from TC was split across
both links (front page vs blog article) the conversion would likely be
significantly different.

It also varies highly depending on the time of day and business of both. Hit
either on a busy news day and you'll get wiped out. The time of day also has a
huge impact on whether the audience is primarily European / East Cost (US) /
West Coast (US) which depending on the nature of your startup can make a huge
difference.

While the article makes interesting reading I wouldn't recommend trying to
apply the findings to your own startup.

------
PabloOsinaga
Its not surprising to see that TC visitors are more engaged - after all, for
you to get to the company from TC you need to click on the article, 'parse'
the text and only then click on the right link. many times, simply reading
about the company is enough for you to decide not to visit.

Therefore in your calculations, I think you are undervaluing the $ value of TC
awareness, since many people that dont visit your site DO read/glimpse over
the article/title and are aware of your existance.

------
petercooper
I suspect I might be old fashioned but I'd take actual leads and conversions
over paying 20 cents each for random hits any day. By such a measure, it seems
TC won hands down. But as several other people are saying, both would be
better ;-)

------
tferris
None of them will bring substantial traffic, users or virality (but HN brings
you slightly more, if you are doing good ~20-30K visits while TC hits you
~5-10K).

If you are raising money or raised already and prepare the next round being on
TC is a must. Not only once, better several times. Consider also Mashable,
maybe not the same brand but you will get much more traffic and virality than
with TC.

Regarding hiring devs HN is of course better.

To get on HN on the front page is much easier than with TC.

------
malachismith
Depends on who you are trying to reach. If you want to reach developers and
the "entrepreneurial market" then Hacker News drives more traffic (and if the
product / audience fit is good will convert better too). If you want to reach
business buyers and investors, then Techcrunch converts better (and drives
better engaging traffic). So... who is your customer / user?

------
slaven
What you post on HN matters a great deal: when we had a general start-up
related article hit the front page we got traffic but few leads (like in OP's
example).

But when we launched an interesting feature and hit the front page -- with the
story's title obviously aimed at our target market of app publishers -- we got
massive amount of leads as well.

~~~
JeremyKolb
I've experienced the same thing, off of 1,300 visits for an off topic article
we got about 7 leads. When we posted something clearly targeting our market
our conversion rate jumped to around 10%

------
trotsky
If you don't list your pricing most TC "leads" are just going to be people
interested in what your pricing model is for a variety of reasons, not actual
leads. One qualified lead in your segment probably represents much higher CLV
than all those TC and HN leads combined. If you're actually looking to
generate sales look elsewhere.

------
JeremyKolb
I write for a startup and have been on HN front page a few times, most visits
from HN in a day was around 1300 for an article about Facebooks Social Graph:
[http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/how-facebooks-
graph-s...](http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/how-facebooks-graph-search-
will-affect-google-technology-and-privacy)

This article misses an important benifit of getting large amounts of traffic:
Google starts to recognize you through author rank and links as a qualified
source of information.

Ever since my articles have been on HN, search traffic has steadily grown.
This could be because of something else, but the common connection is large
amounts of traffic from you guys.

------
DivByZero
It really depends on your goals. You can't compare conversion rates of a link
to the homepage with a link to a blog post. Bounce rate on blog posts is
always higher and the ppv is usually never over 1.5.

However when comparing HN to TC you should not just look at the raw numbers
but also at what comes with it. On HN if you're selling something on target,
you'll get lots of advice and and feedback, Something you're unluckly to get
on TC. TC gives you credibility, it's a logo to put on your website's
"Featured on" box and it helps you selling your product and doing fundraising.

------
orangethirty
It all depends on the market you are selling to. Nothing else. I have launched
things on HN and it all boils down to if the market wants it. For example, my
last project (marketing bits) has had a very high HN acceptance _and_
adoption. Would it enjoy such success in TC? I don't think so because it is
not the target market.

------
nickfrost
They both suck. No targeting, all fluffy early adopters, causing a high churn
rate and lack of potential user insight. I have a solution, the site is live,
with 5,000+ users, 2,500+ companies, but I need another PHP developer to make
it more scalable.

Hit me up! @TheNickFrost on Twitter :)

------
rbchv
Getting upvoted on HN seems like a bit of luck. I've seen really bad posts get
upvotes, and some better ones get nothing.

So just posting on HN is not a launch strategy unless you know people who will
upvote your submission.

------
VonGuard
TechCrunch will get you money. HN will get you respect and/or advice.

------
flexxaeon
Minor nitpick: 2nd and 3rd graphs say TN instead of TC

I always wonder how much of this data is skewed (engagement especially) by the
amount of apps that are built on top of HN.

~~~
eCa
Another nitpick:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graphs#Truncated_gra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graphs#Truncated_graph)

Especially "Conversions by source".

~~~
paulitex
Thanks, fixed.

------
suyash
@Author: More important question you should ask is How to get in the front
page of HN? I never completely got the mystery behind it, can anyone jump in
and explain?

~~~
mkr-hn
Velocity

------
robodale
Neither. Build up a mailing list of prospects while you build and keep them
updated on your progress. On launch day, spread the news among the mailing
list.

~~~
paulitex
Worth noting, we actually did that as well. I believe we got 7-8 conversions
on launch day from the ML.

Built from ~6 months of email capture on the landing page + 4 months of active
customer discovery interviews.

~~~
nickfrost
I suggest we chat about my community of targeted early adopters, that will
make TechCrunch and HN user acquisition, a thing of the past. Seriously.

@TheNickFrost

------
DK007
Get NYT to sponsor you, <http://www.nytimes.com/timespace/>

------
juan_juarez
Why not both? It's not exactly hard to submit something to two different
websites.

------
suyash
HN Hands Down any day if you're looking for developer traffic.

