Hello HN,
I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009.
As a 22 year old fresh out of college, I had launched an early prototype of a marketing platform in 2009 here, got initial users from HN (including patio11) who gave their feedback that my product was trying to do too many things. Their inputs are what that led me to focusing on one thing (A/B testing) and that's how I built and launched "Visual Website Optimizer"(now called VWO). Here's that Show HN thread from 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141
I can't thank this community enough - without Hacker News, VWO wouldn't have existed. Today, we're a team of 250+ people and seen that initial "Show HN" grow into a $20mn+ bootstrapped business (no VC funding). If anyone's interested in reading more, I've blogged this journey (from launch to now) on our website: https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/
For any early stage entrepreneurs / indie hackers reading this, I'm sharing my story to let you know that you don't need connections, funding or breakthroughs to build a successful business. All you need is a hunger to make it happen and a community (like this one) to give you honest feedback for iterating on your product. If you are what Paul Graham calls as relentless resourceful, you will build a successful business.
So, thank you HN! Thanks @patio11 for your feedback and initial shoutouts in 2009. And thanks Paul. Beyond YC funding, you've impacted lives of many other folks (like me) through your essays and by making Hn happen.
PS: I don't know if this post will get any attention on HN today, but I felt like I had to do this :)
In 2011, we were knee deep in google products. We used Google Analytics and the now defunct Google Web Optimizer (no not the one in GA). Our business team wasn't too happy about using GWO. There was something in the script triggered bounce rates in Google Analytics.
Our first solution was to build a script to manage which script to load first. But, we saw that if you don't load GA right away, the metrics were somehow off. But loading GA first sometimes double counts page views.
So as a result, I build an internal A/B testing tool that worked seamlessly. Since it was controlled in the back-end, I could decide when to load the script without causing the double page views. After months of testing, the business team decided to use Visual Web Optimizer. I was pretty pissed.
But, vwo solved the issues of double counting, and redirect. Not sure how it worked but everyone was happy about it. I started working exclusively with this tool and implemented it in a dozen teams. It was a great tool.
But then, a new manager was hired, he said he knew a better tool, and moved our team to optimizely. There was no reason whatsoever. Until I left, I kept recommending and implementing vwo in other teams for a/b testing.