
Ask HN: What successful startups started as "Show HN"? - sbisker
I thought pulling together a list of startups who've done this would be interesting, to explore and perhaps better document the influence of HN on the startup community.
We'll count both stand-alone startups who used Show HN in their launch / iterating strategy and side projects that have evolved into stand-alone startups, for the sake of discussion.<p>Also, if <i>your</i> startup has gone through this: how do you feel using Show HN as a means of launching / gathering feedback my have helped or hurt your product?
======
pg
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863>

~~~
aspir
This is the best part of that whole link:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224>

A good lesson that though someone could build it, most can't and if they could
they'd rather not.

~~~
jfarmer
There's a really easy mental shortcut engineers or engineers who are aspiring
entrepreneurs can make.

It starts with a thought like: "Oh, I can do that by gluing together X, Y, and
Z and configuring the foobaz widget to sync via the 802.11q network."

Your second thought should be: "No normal person could do that, and even those
who could probably wouldn't want to."

~~~
TeMPOraL
I remember that after "Find His Porn" website was featured on HN
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301137>) someone here presented an
application that does the opposite - provides hidden, secure, encrypted drive
- and that basically is TrueCrypt + some magic scripts that make it normal-
user-friendly. Can't Google the link though.

------
borski
Heh, sbisker, don't you remember? We launched Tinfoil Security as a Show HN
before we'd actually built anything and got great feedback. I'm not posting
this as a measure of 'success' as much as a measure of a product that still
exists, has raised venture funding, and is still trying to become a huge
business. :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291944>

<https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com>

~~~
sbisker
...ok, I think I just got told. I actually had forgotten we did that. :P

~~~
borski
Ha, didn't mean for it to come off as snarky, though I suppose I'm okay with
that tone too. :)

------
vyrotek
Oh the memories. I'm not going to put my startup in the Dropbox 'successful'
bucket quite yet, but our multiple 'Ask HN' posts helped mold IActionable into
what it is today.

Its really interesting to look back and see how our company was formed by the
feedback we received. Early on we had one idea which we called 'KaBadge' and
we asked what everyone thought here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795952>

This made us discover an even bigger need. Before people were going to think
about karma/badge/point portability they were going to need systems to help
award them. We switched gears really quick and went to work. It look a bit of
time to convince ourselves that it would be possible. This was way before
someone tossed out the term _'gamification'_ so it was really hard to do any
research on this new market.

Then we came back to the community with IActionable:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126780>

Unfortunately at that time there was no way we could have moved to California
to be part of YC. (families, babies, mortgages, etc) But, we were lucky enough
to discover a local (Utah) incubator back in 2010. Eventually my friend and I
convinced ourselves to quit our jobs:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1347464>

We quickly raised a seed round after the program and haven't looked back.
Things are definitely still evolving but its been an awesome roller-coaster
ride so far.

------
raheemm
Visual Website Optimizer - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141>

Great idea to compile such a list.

~~~
paraschopra
I also recently talked on Mixergy on how much "Show HN" helped me (special
mention to @patio11) [http://mixergy.com/chopra-visual-website-optimizer-
interview...](http://mixergy.com/chopra-visual-website-optimizer-interview/)

------
malandrew
Quora <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146>

~~~
tokenadult
_Quora_

What is the definition of "successful" for the purposes of this thread? I hear
wildly differing accounts of whether Quora is successful or not, and I'm
curious to hear from other HN participants whether or not they think Quora is
a successful startup as they define success.

~~~
larrys
"What is the definition of "successful" for the purposes of this thread?"

My thought would be "validated by attracting reasonable investment money by
angels or VC's". In other words the idea would be good enough for someone to
believe in it that wasn't friends or family or someone's own money. Of course
that's only a starting definition. Someone who did "show hn" and then used
their own money but gained either customer revenue or a significant user base
would also be a success. (And what is "significant" or "reasonable" is also
open to interpretation.)

------
6ren
re "count both": It seems that many many YC startups have shown their work
here, and they will swamp any others.

From the title, I thought this would be about projects that _began_ as "Show
HN" (not began as YC startups, and then showed HN), and I find that idea, of
sideprojects that became something greater, intriguing.

------
bradhe
LayerVault comes to mind. Depends on your definition of success, but last I
heard they're doing well.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2941589>

------
pud
While it's no Dropbox, TinyLetter's launch was a Show HN. MailChimp bought it
a few months ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829101>

------
usiegj00
RightSignature: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510656>

It was great feedback--comment #1 (1055 days ago) is in our app and boosted
our conversion into solid double-digits: "You need a sample document, so
people can test out the 'using your mouse to sign' part without signing up."

------
ayu
Nobody cared about my Show HN, so I'd say it's lukewarm.

And I'm pretty proud of my website, too.

<http://tuneup.fm/>

~~~
duiker101
The idea is really nice! Maybe i would work a bit on the design, also maybe
try not to focus on the same genres. This is something that is bugging me a
lot with all these website like your, consle.fm etc... i really like theme but
they focus on music kinds i am not interested in. I mean on your top bar there
are at least 6 musics for "disco" and 1 pop/rock... this demotivates me
because maybe i would love to see a "classical music" and "metal" etc... i
think that if you expand your music horizonts you might expand your target
audience and really stand out of the crawd of similar websites.

~~~
ayu
hey, I really appreciate the feedback and I'll see if I can add some more
genres :)

------
joejohnson
This community seems to need constant validation that it's worth doing start-
ups and that some are, in fact, successful. I have to feel like if this were
true, there wouldn't be this gaping insecurity.

~~~
nostrademons
I think it's more that it's the people who are on the fence about doing a
startup that are likely to be on a startup-focused forum talking about it. The
ones who _know_ it's a good idea are out there founding companies. And the
ones who _know_ it's a bad idea are at their 9-5 jobs and don't pay any
attention to the startup scene.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by math.

(Edit: BTW, Drew & Aston used to be regular posters on Hacker News, as did
drusenko of Weebly, coffeemug of RethinkDB, lacker of Parse, danielha of
Disqus, aaroniba of Etherpad, and a bunch of other YC founders I've forgotten.
When they realized it was a good idea to start a company, they quit posting,
got into YC, and started building their companies.)

~~~
mindcrime
What about people who are actively founding a company, work a 9-5 job, and
still post on HN? Are we just nuts, or what? :-)

~~~
amac
I would say yes and no. Bootstrapping in itself is not a bad thing I don't
think, but at the same time, if you want to succeed with your venture, you
have to fully commit at some stage.

------
seminal
<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2901156>

~~~
whatusername
Just FYI (and for anyone else): The canonical URL is news.ycombinator.com and
not hackerne.ws

so: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156>

------
feint
pen.io started here. Was noticed by the press and investors here.

------
nader
Our own: <http://thinkery.me>

