
Ask HN: How do I get press coverage for my startup as a high schooler? - schruteroots
I&#x27;m a 17-year-old from a small town in India. There are barely any opportunities for young entrepreneurs in my town and most of what I have achieved so far is by connecting with people and getting to know more about the events as such. I started programming at an early age ( 11 ) and have built several projects since then. I&#x27;m the founder of DomeCode ( https:&#x2F;&#x2F;domecode.com ), a platform that improvises upon existing &quot;learn-to-code&quot; platforms by providing a unified experience. I have gotten over 300 registered users at this point ( I realized it barely 3 weeks back in the alpha version ) and over 2.6k users. This is something that would usually get media coverage especially if a highschooler built it. How do I get media coverage?<p>Reasons :<p>- Better chances of getting my startup crowdfunded<p>- It&#x27;s something good for my college application<p>- I believe this needs to get out there
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matt_s
Some feedback on the site:

It says 6 languages are supported yet when I click deeper I only see things
for Python and Java. If I wanted to learn Go, why would I choose your site
over golangs [0]?

I think more complete content would pull in more users. You pull in more users
and you will have better chance of word spreading. Developers wanting to learn
language $X are going to see how much content a site has first before
committing to using that site.

Maybe have a screen cast showing what the user experience is like, demonstrate
how note taking, practice, reminders and music all come together. I think your
intent is to make it so the user doesn't have to use other tools to help them
learn. Focus on that more.

It has this gradient color text thing on black background going on which might
seem cool but will turn off people, especially those with color blind or
vision issues. I'm by no means a designer but a professional design or theme
could help. You might be thinking it will look like a lot of other sites,
there are reasons why lots of other sites have a similar look/feel. Your site
can still be unique and stand out somehow (again I'm not a designer.) If dark-
mode is part of the experience, highlight that or make it a preference.

[0] [https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1](https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1)

~~~
schruteroots
Hey this is just the beta so all the resources aren't there just yet and to be
fair, I'm not claiming anything about resources for 6 languages just yet. The
platform states that you can practice the coding problems on the platform in 6
languages as of now.

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gus_massa
You alredy posted about this project multiple times
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=arthtyagi](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=arthtyagi)

Try contacting the mods hn@ycombinator.com

~~~
schruteroots
Hey, I agree that I did but I'm not even promoting my project here or
anything. What exactly are you trying to convey through your comment?

~~~
dang
Most likely, what the comments are indicating is that you've been posting too
repetitively about this. HN has a sort of immune system where, after a while,
the outputs will get harsher if people feel like the inputs have been too
repetitive. The currency of HN is curiosity (a.k.a. intellectual interest).
Your desire to improve your situation is certainly understandable, and even
laudable, but that doesn't automatically gratify the curiosity of others.

If you re-read your post closely, you might notice that it mostly talks about
how much you've achieved and the things that you want for yourself. Those
achievements are great! and you have every right to want those things for
yourself! but they aren't the sort of things that readers find interesting.
You might get better results if you focus on what other people want more than
on what you want. (This is a lesson we all need to work on.)

On HN, focusing on what other people want means focusing on what they find
intrinsically interesting. It's actually hard to do that if your primary goal
is to get users or press coverage—readers can always feel when that's the real
underlying goal. If you want to gratify HN's curiosity, a better strategy is
to work on something for its own sake—i.e. purely because _you_ find it
interesting—and then write about it from that perspective.

~~~
ev1
In my experience, this is quite accurate: regardless of what site, HN, reddit,
digg, etc., there's a tipping point where it becomes "Show HN: I did something
cool" transitioning into "this is a spammer, get out"-type of innate reaction.

Another thing is the constant playing off of how something is special purely
because of age; this has been done over and over on HN, and as a lurker I've
seen tons of "im 12 and i made a css framework|cool library|js framework" type
of stuff, and it really isn't helpful or useful for me to know or care about
this.

~~~
schruteroots
I agree to what you're saying to some extent on what you're saying but the
part about me mentioning my age, I'm doing it purely because I've got college
applications as well and it wouldn't hurt to get some good coverage and have
it in my application as well.

~~~
ev1
So does everyone else - the way you word things, it reads like you feel like
you're entitled to "press coverage" or "userbase" and just expecting it to
exist or something you're supposed to get. Arguably it's even worse that
you're making multiple HN accounts for spamming it.

------
auganov
Could try reaching out on Twitter to tech journalists. Or emailing some.

Write this story yourself as if you were a journalist covering it (just don't
write in 3rd person) and put it up on the company blog (or wherever). Link to
that when pitching the story.

Might sound counterintuitive but linking to an existing story makes it so much
easier in my experience.

~~~
schruteroots
I'll try this and write up on what the results were.

------
forgotmysn
make a lot of money

------
stevewodil
Keep spamming it on HN, I'm sure the press will come through one of these
times

~~~
dang
Please don't be a jerk in HN comments.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
stevewodil
Fair enough but by the same token:

>Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to submit your own stuff
occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity

Is clearly not being followed here. Every submission from OP is in some form
promoting their own project

Edit: looks like their submissions have been cleaned up. Carry on!

