Ask HN: Is IndieHackers.com dead? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is IndieHackers.com dead?

12 pointsih_dead8 comments

Some thoughts:

* Ever since the acquisition, the hustle is just not there. Courtland used to spend a lot of time reaching out to people to get them to do interviews, in a recent podcast he said something like "I used to send hundreds of emails to people... now I don't do that anymore". I sense complacency and a feeling of "I made it".

* Now that he does not depend on advertising to make a living, that hustle to keep trying new ideas and get at least a couple of stories to the hn front page have been lost.

* In multiple podcasts, to demonstrate that he built something complicated he mentions " I built the forum from scratch" and I think " cool, but building a basic forum is... not exactly hard". I'm trying to be polite here, but I hope my point is clear.

* The forum has peaked. He makes minimal effort to keep the community engaged, does not start many conversations or actively take part in discussions. If I ran IH, I would post at least 3 to 4 threads to keep the discussion flowing and personally invite individuals to join the conversation and bring in their friends. One of the goals of the stripe acquisition was to start a vibrant community, but i see no signs of life.

* He stopped blogging and removed the link to the blog. The blog used to be a form of accountability.

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101192

What do you guys think?

I actually work quite hard on Indie Hackers. Since joining Stripe I've finally had the breathing room to focus on a long-term vision for the site. Making long-term changes requires a commensurate upfront investment, but it's still much better for everyone than me obsessing over the next week's ad revenue.

I have certainly been less public about what I'm doing. I suspect that will trend will reverse itself in the coming months, but I don't intend to reboot the blog any time soon. The most valuable content on IH comes from other people sharing their stories, not from me, so I'm better off spending my time facilitating that.

A few misconceptions I'd like to correct:

- I stopped sending of hundreds of emails to find interviewees the day I launched Indie Hackers last August. Nothing changed after joining Stripe.

- When I talk about building the forum, it's usually to illustrate the point of developers spending too much time coding. I think it's a bad idea for any founder to build something just because it's complicated, and I certainly wouldn't brag about it.

- The forum has actually been growing nicely in recent months. I used to spend a lot more time seeding discussions, but it's been good to see it grow more organically. In a perfect world I'd have infinite time to do more commenting and lots of other things, but in the real world I have to prioritize.

Sorry, but wtf is wrong with you? You even made a username IH_dead for this?

Seems that you are a troll...

Your points are also no valid at all. Of course at the beginning everyone is grinding a lot until it takes off, now it has enough recognition to get people asking for interviews. Of course when a community is new the founders are more active until it takes off.

Don't call me a troll, that's certainly not what I'm doing here. Respond to my post in good faith and explain your point of view.

Do you really think IH has "taken off"? Certainly not and I would argue it's dying. I bet you the traffic is lower post acquisition. The only post that made it to HN front page is the Scotts cheap flights one. So your only point is that the community has taken off and so the founder is less active? This is how communities and startups die! He should be in acceleration mode, not peace out mode. You call me a troll and make no meaningful points. Are you sure I'm the troll??

Creating an account for a specific purpose is called creating a throwaway. It's not called being a troll, though there can be an overlap sometime, but not in this case.

He may have stopped blogging, but the site itself seems pretty active. No?

See https://twitter.com/IndieHackers

The most recent tweet links to an interview that was posted 4 days ago...

This was on the front page and got flagged away into oblivion. Great going, people who flagged this story. This was a post that could have helped IH if there was a vibrant discussion on this sensitive topic. By censoring it, you are doing IH a disservice, I hope you all realise that.

If you're really concerned about Indie's welfare, why make a throw away account just for this bit of altruism?

I created a throwaway since I don't want to use my main account for this controversial post. Anyway, this post is not about me, so does it matter if it's a throwaway or not? The point is to discuss the concerns that I raised. Let's focus on that please.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com