
Ask HN: Did your “Show HN” go on to become very successful? - jjoe
I used the word &quot;successful&quot; not for ambiguity but because success is relative to each person. Has your Show HN made it big? If so a link would be great!
======
sideproject
Yep. I've shared my side projects here and allowed them to get off to a great
start.

[http://hellobox.co](http://hellobox.co) (create your own HackerNews clone)
[http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com) (a market place for
side projects)

I think sharing "relevant" projects for the audience is quite important. The
subreddit r/startup is also quite good or r/sideprojects if you are looking
for other places to share your projects. ProductHunt is also quite popular
thesedays of course.

~~~
codegeek
i like your sideprojectors project. One bug in comment system. It always says
"posted one second ago" no matter how old the comment is.

~~~
sideproject
Haven't noticed that! Thanks for reporting it. Will get right on it.

------
archagon
Unfortunately, no. I tried posting and deleting my most recent project
(Backgroundifier, an OSX app that turns art into desktop backgrounds) several
times until it got a few upvotes, but it never got past the first few
comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10325451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10325451).
I realize it's not like many Show projects in that it's a) paid, b) not a dev
tool, and c) fairly small in scope, but similar projects have had a lot more
success in Show in the past.

Oh well! I guess luck has a lot to do with it.

------
thecodemonkey
We launched our side project as a Show HN almost 2 years ago and it was a
great success. Could not have asked for a better way to kick it off and the
feedback was super valuable.

Obviously a lot has happened with our product since launch, but this is the
original thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7095228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7095228)

This is our side project: [http://geocod.io](http://geocod.io)

------
marssaxman
I've posted two:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335799)
\- Ozette, text-mode programming editor; as is totally unsurprising for a
project with such a narrow appeal, it didn't get much attention. Don't care,
it's still by far the most successful piece of code I've ever written as far
as my own personal usage goes, since I've had at least one instance of it
running full-time on every computer I've touched for the last year. Nothing
quite as satisfying (or frustrating) as an editing environment entirely
customized to your own taste.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411756)
\- startc, a minimal freestanding C runtime library for 32-bit x86 PCs; got a
lot of attention, including a lead on a job offer (though I'm not looking
right now). Just a small piece of a bigger project, but still, fun to throw it
out there and get some positive feedback.

~~~
contingencies
New editing environment + lack of screenshot = lack of interest.

------
sjs382
I've shared a few that have done very well on their Show HN posts:

Show HN: Artpacks.org – Archive of the ANSI and ASCII art scene (1990 to
present) -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8962810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8962810)
& [http://artpacks.org](http://artpacks.org)

Show HN: SendToMyCloud – A Public Inbox for Your Dropbox and Google Drive -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005870)
& [https://sendtomycloud.com](https://sendtomycloud.com)

And one that didn't do so well (and hasn't, in the market):

Show HN: Private Forms: PGP-Encrypted Webforms for Privacy-Conscious
Receipients -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10154565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10154565)
& [https://privateforms.com](https://privateforms.com)

------
soneca
If you don't mind, I will share my not successful case too :)

I posted this Show HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7768857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7768857))
for a Cold Call Manager. It got some validation on the problem with reasonable
upvotes (57), it stayed on front page for a full day (more than 24h).

But it was a half-baked product with outsourced development (i'm not a
developer myself) from a particularly bad source.

Here is the former landing page:
[http://imgur.com/2VkKWXx](http://imgur.com/2VkKWXx)

It was basically "sales follow-up focused mini Trello" using a few processes I
use myself to this date (from an Excel sheet) on my salesy job.

If some developer out there is interested in a side project solving the
problem of non-sales people having to do sales and demanding a software much
more simple than all CRM and Salesforce out there, contact me and I share the
whole idea.

------
osullivj
My Show HN didn't make it big, unfortunately. The original link [1] never got
anywhere near the front page. I'm not sure why it didn't strike a chord,
because I've seen the exact use case in various banks several times over the
last 10 years: serverizing critical spreadsheets. Just as Node.js puts
JavaScript on the server side, SpreadServe put spreadsheets on the server.
Node.xls if you like!

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043294)

------
inflam52
I've shared an side project of mine
(simplestoreapp.com)[[http://simplestoreapp.com](http://simplestoreapp.com)]
on here and it has gotten me off to a really good start. Most importantly
getting feedback from other users on how to make it better.

I think sideproject is right in stating that "relevance" to the audience where
you are sharing is important. Best of luck!

------
laksmanv
My show HN (a side project on side projects) was reasonably successful, I
wrote about it here:

[https://medium.com/@laksman/sideproject-book-
launch-7c0aeb4f...](https://medium.com/@laksman/sideproject-book-
launch-7c0aeb4f2a2c)

[http://www.sideprojectbook.com/](http://www.sideprojectbook.com/)

------
speedyapoc
Two years ago I posted Musi here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987738)

Since then, I managed to grow it to be one of the top 100 apps in the App
Store. It's been a trip.

------
codyguy
I shared [http://www.thatneedle.com/nlp-
api.html](http://www.thatneedle.com/nlp-api.html), didn't get the kind of
feedback I was expecting on HN. I guess the forum is not what it used to be.

------
semperdark
Getting there, we've got a few thousand users at the moment, largely from HN
and ProductHunt. Feedback from tech-savvy users is incredibly valuable.

[https://www.sonadier.com/](https://www.sonadier.com/)

------
andrewmcwatters
I shared this: [https://github.com/Planimeter/grid-
sdk](https://github.com/Planimeter/grid-sdk)

It didn't catch on here. Sharing it on /r/gamedev helped though! Audience
counts!

