
So you are making good money, now STFU - jacquesm
http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/So+you+are+making+good+money+now+STFU
======
mmaunder
Asking people who are used to getting free business advice whether they think
not sharing free business advice that works is a good idea, is not a good
idea. Hence the comments here.

I think STFU is brilliant advice and I do it myself. A metaphor:

In 1866 a young shepherd named Erasmus Jacobs found a small white stone on the
bank of the Orange River in South Africa. It turned out to be a 21 carat
diamond which they named "Eureka" and it kicked off a diamond rush in the area
that centered around Colesberg Kopje. Turns out that this little hill was an
old volcanic pipe filled with diamonds and every prospector for thousands of
miles descended on the place and started digging.

Here's what it looked like:

[http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/marchandslides.bak/brantle...](http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/marchandslides.bak/brantley_cynthia/images/2-IMG00277.jpg)

Every prospector had their own pulley and own demarcated area they were
allowed to dig.

So if you were digging in, what is today called Kimberly's big hole, and
started finding way more diamonds than anyone else, what would you do? Start
giving everyone around you advice about how and where they should dig?

Sadly, business is largely a zero-sum game because customers and their money
that we compete for are finite.

~~~
wpietri
Business is largely a zero-sum game _with your direct competitors_.

But the only reason capitalism works is that it's a clearly positive-sum game
overall. New competitors are mainly worth investing in because they figure out
a way to create more value for customers. That in turn makes both customers
and producers richer.

Silicon Valley does so well partly because there's a great culture of sharing
information here. I agree with the main article: if you're raking it in and it
isn't obvious, you shouldn't crow about it. But sharing techniques isn't a
problem; money fountains like Google share open-source software and publish
papers all the time.

You can't avoid fast-follow competitors by keeping your mouth shut; eventually
people will notice your success no matter what you say. The best you can do is
avoid it for a little bit.

~~~
chc
It isn't even a zero-sum game with your direct competitors much of the time.
For many software businesses, almost all of your marketshare will be stolen
from competitors with names like "email" and "scribbling on pieces of paper."
Similarly, for a small community newspaper, the biggest existential threat to
your business is neither the other local papers nor any of the larger
newspapers in the area — it's public apathy toward the whole product category.
If you're in a market like that, and the other guys go out of business, that
is not really good news for you.

For many businesses, "a rising tide lifts all boats" is the most accurate
description of the field.

------
lachyg
Site is down, here is the text:

Every now and then someone hits the jackpot. An easy concept, maybe an app or
a small website that makes a ton of money. Or one of those 10 year overnight
successes.

Congratulations! Seriously! I'm really happy for you and I hope that it will
last you for a long long time to come.

One thing you probably don't want to do is to brag about it in an open forum.
The reason why is very simple: A runaway success is what almost every wanna-be
business guy is looking for, and you're just out of the gate so you are still
vulnerable.

Of course it is fantastic that you want to contribute to the knowledge base
and that you want to tell the world exactly how you did it. Which marketing
tricks made the difference and why this works and how much it is making.

But really, you're killing your advantage. Copying your concept (or even your
website or your binaries) is about a hundred times easier than coming up with
the original. You've already validated that it works! And suddenly you find
yourself competing with yourself. At a lower price-point (after all, the
investment was much lower too). You really can't win that way.

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and the web and the app stores in
particular are brutal when it comes to having any kind of success.

Be a submarine. Stay underwater, rake in the $ and be happy with your success.
Loose lips sink ships. At some point you will be able to afford being open but
right now, on the eve of your first success it is _not_ the right time. Of
course, if you're an altruistic type and you don't care about the money by all
means, tell all. But if you have hit a home-run for the first time and you
could do with a bit of extra cash then do yourself a favor: count your
blessings and STFU.

If you don't I guarantee you that your app or website will be cloned multiple
times before the digital ink on your income report is dry.

~~~
jacquesm
Thanks! Fixed now (at least I hope it's fixed, this was rather more traffic
than anticipated).

------
PaulJoslin
To be honest, some of the recent success stories like this, have often become
a success partially due to the publicity gained through sharing how they got
it and being transparent.

If they had stayed quiet, most of these success stories may not have happened
at all.

Examples: \- BingoCardCreator \- Buffer \- The guy who sells the ebook on
making money through android \- Etc.

Often, these scenarios have marginal success, which the owners then blog
about, which gains a lot more attention, which drives the business forward and
makes their success larger. This then becomes even more news worthy and the
process repeats.

~~~
tomgallard
I'm really not sure BingoCardCreator is a good example. Patrick's target
demographic is primarily non tech-savvy school teachers (I think).

I imagine he's made very few sales of BCC on the back of his internet fame
(how many people on HN are in the market for Bingo Card Creation software?)

His consulting business on the other hand...

~~~
PaulJoslin
Well, think about it this way. How many people as a result of his great advice
and transparency have mentioned / linked to his site?

\- That alone ensures he will rank top of Google for any Bingo Card Creation
based key words.

\- Then there's word of mouth from anyone who has ever read one of his
articles to anyone who may benefit from using his software.

~~~
tomgallard
Maybe word of mouth is an effect, but I doubt it's a significant one.

If I recall correctly- most of his traffic comes in through long tail keyword
searches, which he constructs mini-sites for (e.g. Halloween Bingo Card
maker). In these cases I expect that keyword matches, and relevant content are
a lot more relevant than links from tech sites (which mostly go to his blog,
on a separate domain)

~~~
talmand
That's the way I remember it, he was already somewhat successful because of
his taking advantage of an under-served niche market. Most of what I remember
is him talking about how he expanded it and chased the long tail. I'm sure
he's had a boost since he started talking about it though.

I suddenly feel the need to read through his posts again.

------
coderdude
This is something the entrepreneurs on here should be taking more seriously.

My latest adventure in startup land has been going well. As this is my first
real taste of "success" and because I, like many of you, feel a sense of
obligation to share with my community how I stumbled upon something that works
I have been somewhat loose-lipped about my methods and my progress.

When things started to really pick up I decided to post on the Twitter account
how many total sales had been completed. I thought it would help attract more
sellers (and it probably did) but it also got the copy-cats interested.
(Though I display the number of sales on the site, so if you go and add
everything up you can figure all this out anyway.)

I recently found out about my first direct competitor, who it seems is
knocking off other people's creations to sell and clearly got some
"inspiration" (i.e., ripped me off) on how I do things on my end. Right down
to copying HTML from my site. Needless to say it is discouraging, but it also
forces you to hunker down to try and stay ahead of the competition.

I strongly urge others who are in a similar position to reconsider just how
open they are. Especially with the people who will email you privately and ask
for guidance in what they will usually tell you is something that in no way
competes with what you're doing. There are indeed many sharks in the water.

I do think there's something to the whole 'brag about your success and more
people will find out about you' thing. In some cases this probably does turn
out to be better for the business if it attracts a much larger audience. It is
a fine line though and should be walked carefully.

~~~
btilly
If they are ripping you off that blatantly, perhaps you have a copyright case
against them?

I hate getting lawyers involved, but that _is_ what they exist for.

------
patio11
Since I seemed to get mentioned quite frequently in the comment thread:

I have talked quite openly for about six years on both how much money I'm
making and with _very_ specific information on exactly why the business works.
If there is a web app begging to be cloned, it is BCC, since you could make a
decent 1.0 as a CS102 final lab project. BCC (and AR, incidentally) have been
cloned multiple times, right down to button copy (not really a competitive
threat) and the SEO strategy. (P.S. The SEO strategy is not "get popular with
geeks, make out like a bandit", though being quote-unquote Internet famous
certainly has never hurt me. It just doesn't make BCC scads of money. What
makes BCC scads of money is 970 niche bingo activities all designed to rank #1
for a narrowly targeted search term.)

A lot of people I respect in the space enormously are similarly open about
their business, similarly have clones up the wazoo, and similarly don't really
mind. Fog Creek, 37signals, and Balsamiq suggest themselves fairly readily but
there's probably another dozen I could think of given a few minutes.

There's also kind of a fixed-pie thing going on here, where Jacques seems to
be saying the world has (making this concrete for an example) 5,000 teachers a
year who want bingo cards to split up among all the bingo software and they're
going to choose based on price. First, if you learn one thing about software
pricing, learn that software is not sold on price. Second, there are all sorts
of ways in which that sharing information helps to improve the size of the
pie. This is true in both hippy-dippy "everyone gets better!" ways and in you-
can-deposit-the-larger-pie-in-your-bank account ways. (Someone below mentions
BCC and related Internet participation eventually opened quite a few doors in
my consulting career. This is _very_ accurate and consulting is rather
substantially more lucrative than BCC is, though I probably won't continue
doing lots of it forever.)

Also, jealously guarding the pennies you have right now is almost certainly
not the thing you can most effectively be doing to have dollars tomorrow.

------
ryana
I have much more experience with this phenomenon in poker than I do in
business, but here's my viewpoint.

I've seen a lot more people who think they have maximized their success and
want to keep their "secrets" to themselves who end up crashing and burning
because they don't realize what they're doing wrong. Meanwhile, people with
4-figure hourly rates keep talking strategy to root out mistakes and find new
areas to exploit.

Now, if you think you alone are smarter than the collective then go for it I
guess. If you think the community isn't trustworthy and you get less from it
than you gain maybe you should find another group to work with.

But isolation isn't going to make you more successful.

~~~
maxerickson
Is the typical online poker player really that bad?

~~~
ryana
Really how bad? "Bad" is relative obviously since you only have to be worse
than the best 5-10% to not be making money once you start paying rake.

~~~
gravitronic
I had to parse that last sentence 3 times so I'm rewriting it for anyone else
in my shoes:

"Bad is relative obviously since you have to be in the top 5-10% to be making
money once you start playing rake."

~~~
bornhuetter
"Bad is relative, obviously, since you have to be in the top 5-10% to be
making money (once you start playing rake)"

------
ispivey
Nobody's made the obvious point yet:

It depends on what kind of business you're running.

Some businesses benefit from lots of publicity and buzz, and have real
barriers to entry. These are generally companies with teams, bigger than a
one-man shop (though not always). If it takes months to clone your product and
build the right expertise, you can be comfortable telling everyone about how
well you're doing.

Some businesses have very low barriers to entry, and the publicity they get in
places like HN won't help them significantly grow their business. These
businesses should STFU and crank.

Then there are a bunch of businesses in the middle, where there's no right
answer and the people leading the company have to make a gut call on the
benefits of publicity vs. the risk of getting ripped off. It's business, it's
not black and white, and you have to make decisions like this all the time.

------
noelsequeira
I believe this advice applies to specific businesses / opportunities (most of
them likely B2B).

B2C apps, especially those that rely on network effects to grow (Instapaper,
Gumroad, Buffer) would do well to shrug off any concerns about clones, and
continue to do what they do best: iterate on product and get more visiblity.

And while Instapaper and Gumroad might not have shared a detailed analysis of
their journey in the "How I made $X in Y days on platform Z" format, their
ability to succeed is in some ways tied to their perception as a successful
business. In Instapaper's case, as a user, I'm building a repository of
articles, and I wouldn't invest any effort if I felt the service wouldn't be
around in a few months. A similar argument might be made for Gumroad - as a
"paywall for everything", it just can't afford to seem small-and-under-the-
radar, something that could easily be misconstrued as fly-by-night.

------
clarky07
The App store has 600k apps. Every app I sell already has dozens of
competitors. Giving back to the community with advice is only going to raise
my profile and potentially help others.

Copycats are not something to be worried about unless you managed to find
something very easily copied, hasn't been done before, and also is very
profitable. That is a very small slice, and when people notice you at the top
it won't last long anyways.

I think Bingo Card Creator is a great example. There are tons of copycats
here, but he is selling more than ever. Presumably all the links he gets
talking about his story help his search rankings.

------
kayoone
Recently i saw this phenomenon on HN becoming really popular and obvious:
Someone posts a popular story on HN like the one today where the Dropzone OSX
App made 8k$ in one day. A good story with valuable information.

Shortly after we see 1-2 popular posts that adress the same story and usually
use an attention grabbing headline that relates to the original post and rant
about it.

I dont really like this, HN shouldnt become a marketing vehicle for
opportunistic bloggers...

~~~
jacquesm
Guess what: The fact that it is a good story with valuable information is
exactly the problem here. Let's give it a week or so before you can say with
any degree of certainty that this is not called for. I'm pretty sure someone
somewhere right now is making a 'clone' of that particular app and for once
the app store review backlog is helping instead of hindering.

I know a lot of HN users 'out-of-band' and we have seen this phenomenon
several times now. Not everybody that visits HN does so with good intentions,
there are enough sharks here that you need to weigh the pros and cons of this
kind of openness. If there is no gain for you then you have to wonder if being
open is the right way to go.

~~~
sirwitti
I think you're right, that there are always people who copy/clone/... stuff.

But I also think that many of those who copy will do a bad job. I'm not sure
whether this would always be bad for the original creator...

------
paulsutter
If your advantage is so small that your product can be easily cloned, you are
definitely working on a problem that is too small.

Go back and watch a couple SpaceX launches and re-read Peter Thiel's comments
on the slowdown in innovation. There are plenty of big problems to solve. The
good ones involve contrarian thinking, so are further protected from clones.

Even if you don't want to work on basic advances, at least build a product
with network effects. Dropbox and Airbnb aren't rocket science, but their
businesses are protected by network effects.

~~~
dave1619
Totally agree about building something that's defensible, and network effects
is one way.

Just wondering, how does Dropbox have network effects?

------
ScottWhigham
I suspect this will be a story in which the comments are overly biased against
the POV of the topic. I say that because (a) if you believe him, then you're
probably already STFU'ing (and why come out now), and then (b) posts like this
are often largely ignored for their content and, instead, people with an
agenda or an axe to grind will come out of the woodwork. The only people who I
can see arguing adamantly/strongly on the side of the OP are people who did
NOT actually STFU and were subsequently burned. Anyone else who believes will
either offer a medium-strength comment ("Good post - I agree") or just an
upvote. People who disagree will cover the extremes - and that's what has
happened here already.

That being said, it's a good post and well written. Thanks for sharing.

------
thomseddon
"Be a submarine. Stay underwater, rake in the $ and be happy with your
success."

Are you really advocating that the model for sustaining/growing good business
is to keep shctum about it and hope your competitors don't notice?

I must say it seems somewhat backwards that someone would actively seek to
stunt the popularity of their product by keeping it under wraps and so trading
off overall reach.

Personally I would rather work in an environment where imitation is viewed as
catalyst for innovation.

~~~
jacquesm
> Are you really advocating that the model for sustaining/growing good
> business is to keep shctum about it and hope your competitors don't notice?

No, that was not what I was advocating.

~~~
thomseddon
Inherently, exposure tends to be perpetual, and so it certainly does seem that
at the time you are growing fast (viral?) is actually an excellently poignant
time to increase exposure.

I certainly agree that one should be careful to not just completely erode any
competitive advantage, however I would absolutely support anyone sharing the
success of their app. I mean, that's one of the reasons we're all here, right?

------
granitepail
I'm always a bit shocked at how incestuous this community can be. Many
articles that pop up are simply responses to other articles, rarely containing
enough content to justify being anything other than a comment. In this case, I
saw the content of this article condensed into a single, well written, concise
comments on the article about that guy making $8k off of some Mac OS X app.
Worse, that was an article I found a bit obnoxious in and of itself (it felt
hard to justify that as anything other than boasting when I'm fairly certain
everyone understands a well promoted sale can do some good.)

Closing off that rant and moving on to an actual comment, I don't know that I
agree with the 'advice' here. If you have to hide the fact that your idea is
making money out of fear of copy-cats stealing up your business, then it was
certainly not a sustainable model to begin with. It's a good way to make a
quick buck and, in that context, this is likely good advice, I just wouldn't
count on some project that depended on it to last any meaningful amount of
time.

------
sparknlaunch12
Don't necessarily agree with the statement that by sharing they give up their
advantage.

This assumes the approach is repeatable, and applicable to other products.
These success stories are a nice way of sharing knowledge and giving others
hope.

Not all stories are luck, but clever ways of researching and solving problems.

I am thankful to those that share and have learned lots. Please keep sharing!

Some examples: [http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/learning-
from-o...](http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/learning-from-other-
startups/)

------
chernevik
Server fall down, go boom

Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): The server closed the connection without
sending any data

EDIT: All better here now

~~~
rcamera
I got this too:

Unable to connect to database server

The MySQL error was: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket
'/tmp/mysql.sock' (11).

EDIT: also working now.

------
rmATinnovafy
Don't STFU. Tell us about it, but be prudent with the details.

As a community of hackers/business people we want to find out what works.
Sharing results allows us to analyse the data. Any person that knows a bit
about business understands that sharing the data is not a problem. This due to
the fact that any competing business that uses your data is trying to repeat
your success without all of the parameters. The data is one part of the
success, the other is the implementation.

The implementation is what makes something a sucsess. You can go and download
all of the data of Google, and you won't be able to duplicate it.

Now, like I said, be prudent with what you share. Maybe you have some
marketing trick that is working magic. Don't share it until it stops working.
Then tell people all about.

------
kochb
I agree that you shouldn't go out to the extent of bragging - as jacquesm
points out your business is still vulnerable. Don't let success give you an
inflated opinion of yourself.

I disagree with prescribing the opposite extreme. The most successful products
don't become successful because nobody has heard of them yet. It's selfish to
not share what you've learned with others, and just as bad it deprives you of
opportunities to learn from their feedback.

The best don't become that way by being kept secret. They're the best because
they add value to the service by being good at what they do. If your level of
dedication to making good product is clonable, you're dead already.

------
markyc
Patio11 may have another story to tell on this subject :D

------
mootothemax
Out of interest, are there any concrete examples of where this has happened,
or that anyone has personally experienced? I'm thinking about the full lot:
writing/publishing a success, seeing people clone/steal/implement, and then a
resulting loss of money?

I think that this point should be emphasized:

 _At some point you will be able to afford being open but right now, on the
eve of your first success it is NOT the right time._

Reading a bit too quickly, I lost the meaning of the blog post and thought one
should _never_ share details ;)

~~~
zainny
I've had my popular mobile application almost exactly cloned. The developers
used the exact same images, flows, etc...and on the product page used the
exact same screenshots as mine. Their app had a 1:1 likeness with mine. They
even put my product/company name in their keywords so their product would show
up when customers searched for mine.

My product remained successful, but they also did quite well too.

~~~
mootothemax
_I've had my popular mobile application almost exactly cloned._

Ouch, bad luck! But was this after you published an article or two talking
about your success, or was it cloned independently?

~~~
zainny
Because the application was successful it did receive a bit of press. I didn't
actually ever directly talk about how much money I was making, or how many
downloads I had, but I'm sure most could have made a decent educated guess at
both based on App Store ranking and the press coverage.

~~~
thetrumanshow
Hmmm. Maybe I'm the minority, but I can't extrapolate those data points to
even begin to understand the ballpark. I have an app tucked away somewhere
that has a huge amount of traffic and a great rank in its marketplace. If I
were to provide the stats and the context, you might assume I was making a
killing, and you'd be wrong.

------
xanadohnt
I can't disagree more. First and foremost, if you have to keep quiet to
survive then something is seriously wrong with your business model. Your
product sucks and you either can't win over the competition or you're
promoting only to the naive (whereby keeping quiet protects your shortcomings
from being "found out"); either position sucks and I'd rather fold. Second,
being open about your product affords so much more advantage over being
stealth. Attracting an audience is not just good for building your customer
base. Who knows, you might attract investment, press coverage, build your
personal and commercial reputation, etc. Third, it's hard for a team to be
excited about a product they cannot discuss. Keeping the team's excitement,
motivation, and morale high is paramount to success.

------
gavanwoolery
Respectfully, I strongly disagree.

There is no such thing as "easy money" -- hence the term "10 year overnight
success." If you implemented an idea first, you will be the space leader, and
your competitors won't be able to budge your position unless they
significantly improve upon your idea. Look at Angry Birds or Minecraft. They
both were relatively easy to make, but hard enough that not just anybody could
do it. Despite both of them constantly releasing their numbers, no one has
been able to take over their space (there have been many clones, even
successful ones, but they are still far behind in terms of monetary success).

What you WANT to do:

Brag about your success. Even fudge the numbers if you have to. Your success
will get you in the headlines, which is free advertising for you.

------
ericb
I beg to differ. Peldi with Balsamiq, and Notch with Minecraft both
demonstrate this strategy well.

Being open turns winners into _bigger_ winners. I would not have looked at
either services without their blog posts. Yes, the strategy attracts me-too
services. BUT, the strategy only attracts wannabes _if it is working_. So, if
you post your earnings and it draws no attention, it is unlikely the
competitors which Jacques fears will start circling because no one read the
post! I think there's a pg quote somewhere about none of the YC companies ever
"losing" to a competitor...

I also think the characterization of most businesses as zero sum games is
wrong. The difference is that we're creating diamonds rather than finding
diamonds.

~~~
jacquesm
Minecraft is technically beyond most copycats and Balsamiq is in a completely
different category.

If it isn't working by all means post your figures. If it _is_ working, keep
them to yourself until it no longer matters. Finding something that works is
hard enough without having to fend off a horde of clones competing for the
same space.

And in the case of app-store stuff 'clones' could be bit-for-bit clones, made
in minutes off your hard work.

~~~
yesimahuman
How is balsamiq in a completely different category, didn't it too start as a
"small" app? From my interpretation of your post sharing like Peldi or
37signals is exactly what you are suggesting not to do, yet one of the reasons
these companies have such great exposure is because they've shared enough to
build an audience.

~~~
jacquesm
Balsamiq looks like lots of work to me, and it can not be easily copied. I may
be wrong there but that's my impression.

~~~
yesimahuman
Thanks! I ask because I hope my product fits the balsamiq mold and one of our
strategies has been to be open and share stuff, so this post made me feel
uncertain about that strategy!

------
jakejake
STFU is not terrible advice if you don't feel you have a good mental filter
for the things that you say and write. But offering advice and sharing
knowledge doesn't necessarily have to be the same as giving away your secret
sauce in my opinion. I release a lot of open source tools that we use but that
doesn't mean I have to write blog posts about all of our internal numbers,
strategies and future roadmap.

You can share in even more generic ways such as business strategies in
general, without going into great deal about your particular path. I think
it's easily possible to share and be a part of the development/business
community, yet still maintain your competitive edge.

------
philgo20
I don't get it. What's the point of your post? You don't think there's any
value in sharing how they did it? You really think they might bet copied and
eventually failed because they shared their stories on HN or something?

~~~
jacquesm
> You don't think there's any value in sharing how they did it?

There is great value in it. Greater still for the wrong people.

> You really think they might bet copied and eventually failed because they
> shared their stories on HN or something?

I don't 'think' this, I know this for a fact, I've seen it 3 times up close
now. And I fully expect there to be a fourth within a week, see the current HN
homepage.

~~~
chmike
Maybe a difference could be made in _how_ they explain how they did it. It
might be possible to share some valuable lesson learned without exposing the
business.

I personally find valuable to see examples of people next to me who managed to
succeed. It means to me that it could not just be a dream.

------
normalocity
If an idea was so easily cloned, then it wasn't that valuable in the first
place. This is the primary driving force behind all things that drop in price
with economies of scale, lack of scarcity, and/or increasing ease of access.

Besides, ideas often aren't cloned because someone talked - they're cloned
because (a) multiple people/groups often co-create very similar ideas because
we're all feeding off the same pool of inspiration, and (b) your idea probably
isn't as unique as you think it is, and the "brilliant stroke of insight" you
experienced to create this thing was probably obvious to a lot of people.

------
phatbyte
I don't agree at all. It doesn't matter if someone copies your product, they
will be marked as the "<your app> clone", and as long as you have a stable,
good looking app and with good feedback from clients you don't have to worry
that much.

Yes, you may loose a margin of profit that might be redirect to your cloned
app, but if your app is really good you are safe. People tend to use the
original, not the copy-cat.

Look at Angry Birds, the cloned games tend to be called "that game that looks
like ANGRY BIRDS" even if they don't even have birds, but pigs or elephants.

~~~
creamyhorror
About Angry Birds clones - surely they're called clones only because Angry
Birds was a breakout hit? In the case of more modest successes, their copycats
may be the first thing that many people browsing the App store see. Then they
never see the original in the first place (especially if the copycat has gamed
the placement or search results). Then they'll never know it was a clone of
something that came earlier.

(If you have an app that is clearly better and is at the top of the marketing
pile, then there's no problem of course. Let others clone you all they want -
you'll still stay ahead.)

~~~
bermanoid
Absolutely - look at PapiJump as compared to Doodle Jump. I've heard on too
many occasions to count that PapiJump is just a less polished clone of Angry
Birds, despite the fact that is predates it by more than a decade.

People probably look at Farm Town and assume it's just another FarmVille
ripoff...

First to market only makes a difference if you're huge, otherwise you might as
well be doing market fit analysis for your competitors.

Then again, games are an area where success is particularly easy to track, so
you gain very little by keeping sales figures private. In other areas, you
might be giving away a lot more information by letting people know that your
weekend project is selling 10k a day.

------
joshklein
Thing is, most people's goal is attaining the status our culture associates
with money, not the money itself. The thinking goes, "what's the point of a
runaway success if no one knows about it?"

------
nickpyett
This is a tricky one; you could still market your product without telling the
world you're making money.

But what if telling the world you're making money is a great way to market
your product?

Even one person knowing about your app (regardless of money) risks someone
cloning it, or competition springing up.

If you think you have a chance of staying ahead of the competition (improve
UI, improve design, add features, build a community, engage with
clients/customers), you should probably shout about your product from the
rooftops at every chance you get.

------
chernevik
Can people name examples of this actually happening?

I can see it both ways. My instinct would be to stay below the radar as long
as I could. But I do see advantages in publicizing success: 1\. Large and
rising revenue signals desirability to other customers / clients, and thus
works as marketing. 2\. Known success stories can more easily recruit talent.
3\. Can't be bought out at crazy premium from stealth mode.

Looking through some cases would help sort it all out.

------
sirwitti
This is my response: <http://martinwittmann.at/please-dont-shut-up>

------
nihilocrat
This is not really possible if you are working on a mass-market product, like
a videogame. Financial success is synonymous with publicity, so if you STFU
you will almost certainly not succeed.

Sure, you don't need to brag about it or post sales figures directly on your
site (Minecraft), but people are going to notice and often try to clone your
game.

------
hetman
Hoarding is always good after all right? The attitude in some of the posts in
this thread remind me of how open source might have been viewed a few decades
ago. Perhaps different people simply have different priorities.

I'll just add that if you have something actually worth saying, being so gruff
just to get attention is probably unnecessary.

------
rome
Simply copying someone's idea isn't always enough to being successful with it.
Google+, a social network clone, still can't compete with Facebook. All of the
Instagram clones don't have anywhere near the amount of users that Instagram
has. Execution of an idea is what counts.

~~~
stevenwei
Both Facebook and Instagram have network effects that making cloning less
effective (not to mention they're both free).

Utility apps sold via the App Store are indeed much more easily (and
profitably) cloned.

------
RedwoodCity
Frequently a market can support multiple versions of a product and the
presence of multiple versions of the product create the potential to increase
the overall market. If there was only one flavor of linux today a lot fewer
people would be using linux

------
jerguismi
There is also another psychological factor here. By publishing your results,
you are saying "I have cornered this market". So maybe people will think that
"ok, that has been done, I'll have to try something else".

~~~
jacquesm
Those are not the people that you'd have to worry about, they're not
experienced enough. Anybody in a position to compete would immediately think:
clueless newbie with gold in their hands -> raid.

~~~
alttab
When iOS first hit it big my series of apps were stolen before they even got
to the app store.

------
givan
Sometimes telling your story inspires people to start their own stuff.

People fearing someone will steal their idea forget that the execution is the
hardest part and most of the times clones don't have the same success.

~~~
alttab
On the app store cloning the binaries is really easy.

------
savrajsingh
I think most people realize this -- for every amazing runaway success posted
to HN I imagine there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other folks who would
rather not share their stories.

------
crag
I'll tell you how to brag.. donate. You made a million, give 100k away. Trust
me, everyone will love and respect you.

------
chmike
When is it the good moment to expose a success story, if such a moment do
exist ?

~~~
adaml_623
When you are trying to get support/publicity for your next venture. Or the
next stage of your venture.

------
desbest
Hacker News overloaded the website. Unable to connect to database server.

------
georgieporgie
I agree in general, but:

1) These are, by far, the most inspiring stories on HN. I would so much rather
read about how a developer or small group sold _X_ dollars of product _Y_ than
about a mega-corporation going public.

2) The SEO benefits of creating buzz and links around your product must be
worth something. I don't know how applicable this is to something like iPhone
apps, which I assume are generally discovered within the iTunes store.

