
Hacker News Startups: Listing/Wiki of startups founded by HNers (not just YC) - markbao
http://hnstartups.com/
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markbao
Hi! A bit of time ago, a guy asked for a listing of everyone's startup on HN
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=568951>

So here it is! On Sunday I spent a few hours hacking together a wiki thing in
Rails from scratch. A few things that need to be fixed, but otherwise, hope
it's useful for you.

 __* Not restricted to YC. Any HN people can submit/edit.

(this comment used to be about how our VPS exploded and started OOMing.)

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davidw
Wow... what wiki and VPS and settings? That's pretty bad.

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markbao
I built the wiki from scratch.

There was a rogue ruby script that was running for no apparent reason, taking
up all the server resources.

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davidw
> I built the wiki from scratch.

This is open source and doesn't consume a lot of resources:

<http://dedawiki.dedasys.com/>

Your layout/css is definitely nicer, though. I'm not much of a UI guy.

Also, tags or some sort of classification might be interesting...

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markbao
I thought about tags. I think it might be just better/easier/less cluttered to
mention some keywords in the descriptions (which are searchable.)

If HNStartups blows up enough, I'll add them.

Thanks for the link to that wiki!

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webwright
Nice work. Would _love_ a location field. Use case: I live in Seattle. I would
be interested to see other HN startups in Seattle. It'd also be academically
interesting to see distribution.

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jonallanharper
Good call. Location would be excellent.

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adrianwaj
I'd like to see an RSS feed at some point, would be great.

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hwork
If you want to slurp in some more data about the companies already in there,
you can use the CrunchBase API: <http://groups.google.com/group/crunchbase-
api>.

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davidw
Another place you can list your startup: your profile page on HN. Way too many
people leave that empty, with no URL, no contact information, "no nothin'".

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jgilliam
This will be very useful. Thanks for setting it up.

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falsestprophet
The design is very elegant. Congratulations on a job well done. And thanks for
this contribution to the community.

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pxlpshr
Definitely agree, hope you continue expanding on this... overtime it would be
cool to have a section based on stats and performance, perhaps associated to a
few metrics like link-backs in google, press on blogs, tweets, etc.

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falsestprophet
And one day: market capitalization

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gojomo
Nicely done!

Ideas in no particular order: Have a master index page, with just startup
names, for seeing overall size of wiki and one-click navigation to any one
page. Offer browsing to the ordered list starting at letters other than 'A'.
Make URLs guessable (and thus also SEO-friendly). Improve disclaimer that it's
any HN user startup, not officially YC-related -- there's a small risk of
confusion, better to be ahead of it.

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markbao
Great ideas, Gordon.

Master index page is an interesting idea. Not sure about how useful it might
be, since there's already search, but I'll do that soon. _Edit: done._

The alphabetical list is ordered with pagination — do you mean have links A B
C, etc. to jump?

Guessable/pretty URLs are on my list. Just didn't get around to it :) and I
tried to have a decent nonobstructing disclaimer on the side, but maybe it
needs a bit of a boost :)

Cheers and thanks! Mark

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gojomo
A master name index would let viewers sense the size of the set moreso than a
reported number; see patterns in names; discover interesting names they
wouldn't know to search for (and might not page 'next, next, next' to find).
Such a view could also grow into a 'dynamic screener' -- one click to filter
view by 'official YC', geo-location, launched-yet, etc.

Yes -- I meant quick-jumps to letters. But that is really only interesting as
a way to randomly browse without blind-jumps into the page numbers.

Again, nice job!

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markbao
Quick jumps might take a bit of time. For now, though:

<http://hnstartups.com/list>

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gojomo
And at 7pm PT, with 199 startups listed, the surprise winning opening-syllable
is...

"Scrib"/"Skrib", with 5: Scribd, Scribnia, Scribular, Skribbls, and Skribit.

"Feed" is a close second at 4: Feedback Army, FeedFlix, Feedity, and
Feedscrub.

Then it's a 6-way tie at 2 each: Big-, Drop-, Hot-, Res(cue)-, Start-, and
Where-.

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wensing
Don't send the like link to # -- it jumps you to the top of the page and you
lose your place.

~~~
markbao
Thanks! Fixed.

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adrianwaj
The site can be SPAMMed. It's good start though. I could claim Google as my
startup, and someone could claim mine under anyone's username.

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adrianwaj
Also, you could setup a new HN username and post to the site in the same
minute.

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streety
It might just be me but I didn't realise that clicking on the like link was a
vote for that startup. An up arrow or a plus sign might be more clear.

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knightinblue
But the 'like' tag has numbers in parentheses. People should be immediately
able to see that it's a kind of voting.

Now if there was a like/dislike system in play, well that's different.

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streety
'People' are stupid. Sorry if I/we disappoint.

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jack7890
Beautifully done. Simple, elegant, and highly useful website.

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netsp
How do you keep this a Listing/Wiki of HN startups as opposed to a
Listing/Wiki of hnstartups?

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adrianwaj
Can you have: for sale, an optional price, when it was launched, current
number of employees/people

Ideally there would be some verification if such data was added, whereby the
user would need to link to HNStartups from their profile and also their site.

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dhimes
Maybe grab it from a pad-like file on the site- so users can update.

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matthias
Very useful. Could you add a field for input of HN threads pertaining to each
startup?

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markbao
I added "hnsearch" link to each listing that executes a SearchYC query on the
startup name.

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rrival
Not that it applies to me but what about TechStars / etc colored indicators?

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vaksel
I think it'll look much better if you have everything on a single page, and
make it more condensed:

i.e. something like <<<Name + link to site>>> [HNusernamelink] [HNSearch]
[[[DESCRIPTION]]]]

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BerislavLopac
This one is my favorite: <http://hnstartups.com/startup/239> :)

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showerst
You may want to add rel="nofollow" to your outgoing links, just to discourage
people from spamming it for a free link.

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vorador
Btw, why all of those startups are web sites ?

Ain't there anybody who sells desktop applications ?

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diN0bot
i can't submit a comment on the HNers page. i don't use disqus. i keep getting
an alert about "username must contain 3 characters" even though i've typed my
full diN0bot username.

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jamroom
We've been in business for 6 years - can I still be a "startup"?

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mapwow
don't forget the CSRF/XSRF protection...
<http://hnstartups.com/startup/64/like>

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Raphael
Damn it. Don't click this link unless you want to vote for his startup! Or
vote for mine. <http://hnstartups.com/startup/100/like>

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JeffL
Nice, but adding a startup doesn't work in Chrome. =)

