Show HN: Barnacl.es, a community news site for never-funded bootstrappers
barnacl.es
barnacl.es
Doubt this. Remember that VC is only available to those who already have an "in" with the social proof network of the VCs.
We, like many many others, bootstrapped our business out of necessity, not out of choice.
>It's such a non-traditional way to start in the Silicon Valley.
The growth was definitely a lot slower in the beginning but retaining control (instead of taking VC) has been a very positive upside.
:( C'mon, aside from being uncool, doing this is likely to get the post automatically removed from the front page.
It would be distasteful if incentives were offered in exchange for up-votes...but as it is, everyone's free to do as they please.
It sucks that someone created an awesome site and then decided to ask for upvotes, but it's not ok to do that.
Political campaigning.
What's worse, I believe that clicking one of those little triangle icons is literally equivalent to direct vote manipulation.
> Can I ask people to upvote my submission?
> No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, not because someone is promoting it.
It's removed.
I suspect the community might become more Europe-oriented, because it’s more difficult to get funding here and there are more bootstrapped businesses as a result.
You underestimate the number of bootstrapped businesses here in the US. :)
It's also a lot harder to set up any sort of business in most places in Europe, at least compared to doing it in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if this community will become centered on North/South America and Asia.
In the US, you could start selling widgets instantly (all legally, taxes taken care of). Getting an LLC (something like a GmbH/Ltd) set up takes around 1-2 weeks tops, securing a company credit card - a few days.
Source: Self-employed US expat in Germany.
(At least until the Brexit happens)
I'll still have to take care of taxes locally here (tax residency, grumbles), which are the biggest time sink. Maybe I should hop the border into the Czech Rep. :)
For instance in Germany you have the "Unternehmergesellschaft" or Mini-GmbH which is really cheap to set up and should also be really cheap to run as long as you're not doing anything complex accounting-wise. From what I've heard it doesn't take more than a couple weeks.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unternehmergesellschaft_(haftu...
In certain industries there is a bias against that form as it shows you are bootstrapping without much cash, but I would hope it's not a problem in tech. Though it probably does suck to write "haftungsbeschränkt" (liability-limited) everywhere: there is no legal short version.
In Denmark the situation is not that different from the US. You can legally operate as a sole proprietor simply by filling out an online form registering for a CVR number (a business tax ID). It's free and instant. Setting up an ApS or IVS (roughly equivalent to an LLC) is also pretty easy, and can be done online.
This is the first of many spin-offs using the lobste.rs source code and I think it's a cool initiative!!
One of my feature requests to lobsters was to incorporate Oauth provider so it becomes an alternative identity/auth source. The invite tree and the moderation log will cause it to be one of the most trusted of these providers.
My request was rejected by jcs, but it will be cool to see you incorporate this.
Interesting idea! Is that actually possible? Does increasing zoom (as in Chrome) actually affect any styles?
You can't get zoom level directly anymore, but you can monitor the "Device Pixel Aspect Ratio".
This tells you enough to know if the user zooms in /out.
* https://lobste.rs * https://github.com/jcs/lobsters * https://github.com/pushcx/barnacl.es
1) some email validaters don't accept the domain as a valid email 2) it's more expensive that a normal .com 3) there's less of a need for www. infront of a non-.com (IMO) 4) sometimes when typing out the domain it'll turn hot and clickable, sometimes not 5) you are super hipster and cool with a non-dot-com
Nonetheless, I've signed up (https://barnacl.es/u/sjs) and added it to my personal aggregator. Good luck!
How has HN (partly) avoided this? I guess having a separate "show" category helps.
I think the high-brow tone helps too. Sometimes it chafes but it's way better than the alternative. People do self-promote here but to get away with it you have to have some actual substance... any "hey look at me I am awesome" stuff tends to get buried.
Most communities that don't make it start in a blaze of glory then the curators/moderators tire of keeping that fire blazing day after day.
https://barnacl.es/invitations/open
Go forth and sign up in a veil of secrecy!
The term is "small business." There are millions of them all over the world. More of them than there are "startups" by number at the least.
It never ceases to amaze me how warped and myopic the tech industry's understanding of the world is.
Startups in the SV notion of the term don't even compare in number, even in the US. Heck, every accounting firm you see, it's such as "small business". Every local grocery store. Every restaurant. Every ice cream parlor. Every jewelry maker. The list goes on and on...
[1] Well, they wouldn't say no to striking it big, but it's not like SV founders dreaming of $10B exit.
There really does need to be a term for "SME pursuing a growth-heavy strategy, to the degree that's possible without outside assistance."
I would say "technology enabled SME pursuing a growth-heavy strategy without outside assistance"
There is a fundamental difference in how you start/grow/manage an internet based business vs. a geographically based one.
I'm not sure if "small business" is an appropriate word to describe a product/service without geographic boundaries. It is if you're starting a dry-cleaner or restaurant, but I'm not sure that's what this crowd is doing.
Happy barnacling.
Grandiose slurs like this count as calling names in arguments, which is against the rules here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. There's no content in such a statement, merely indignation and setting yourself above others. That appeals to others who share the same identity sentiment (in this case, anti-"tech industry" as opposed to pro-"tech industry", not that these things mean anything), but it does not add information to a discussion, which is what we're looking for.
The rest of your comment is fine, of course, though not necessarily true—these terms aren't obviously synonymous.
[0] https://barnacl.es/s/bwd2dt/please_upvote_the_show_hn_on_bar...