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Comment by roymurdock | Hacker News Reader

damn, this guy built a tool for growth hackers to make android app store spam, added gamification when it started failing, then added a pyramid MLM referral system for users to market it by word of mouth. he's obviously very smart and motivated. it's just kind of sad to me that the ad economy has grown so large that this is the best way for smart young people to make money.

i doubt he really hates his product at the end of the day, it's just a catchy way to market it. if he did, he would've walked away when his partner did to freelance some more or do another startup.

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> best way for smart young people to make money

It's like when you see people on YouTube who make horrendous clickbait, yet get millions of views. It's easy to laugh and dismiss them, but financially they're probably rolling in it...

Are they the smart ones for exploiting the largest, most lucrative audience (young children who are more likely to watch more of the video before clicking off) and cashing in? Or are they legitimately not self-aware?

I'd guess it's just people reacting to financial incentives.

It's a bummer that our society is structured with financial incentives that are so poorly aligned with interesting goals.

I think it's incumbent on us to change that. Too often something dubious is justified by how much money it makes. But we don't have to buy into it. And we can call it out when it happens.

Look at how people treat the statement, "I work at Facebook", for example. It has changed a lot over the last decade. It used to be hot and positive. But I had a friend start just recently. They're doing something worthwhile and entirely unrelated to the many things terrible about Facebook. But they still felt obliged to apologize for it.

I'd like to see more of that pressure applied to people who are making money by making the world worse.

> I'd like to see more of that pressure applied to people who are making money by making the world worse.

Yup. 100% agreed. And I want to remind everyone here that putting such pressure is a perfectly legitimate thing to do in market economy. Companies respond to market signals, so if a moral value is not made into a signal - i.e. made to impact sales - it won't get considered.

So should I tell other people in my coworking space that I think their job is total bullshit?

One or two happen to be in some field that trigger my bullshit alert and I think it’s somewhat sketchy what they do. For example, stuff around network marketing for dietary supplements.

I mean, who am I to judge?

I don't know that I'd walk over and say, "Buddy, this is bullshit!" Just as a practical matter, that doesn't do much to change minds.

But as to who you are, I'd say you have several things that give you grounds to have an opinion. One is that you're a human being and want to see other humans treated well. Two, you're part of a variety of communities, and you have an interest in seeing those communities be healthy. Three, you're a successful entrepreneur, so you have real expertise in what makes for a good business. And surely there are more.

In your shoes I'd definitely look for opportunities to influence people like that. It can be as simple as the look that passes across your face when they tell you what they do. If they ask for advice, you can point them to something healthier. You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses. And with people where you are already an influencer (e.g., friends, family) you can definitely help keep them from getting into work like that.

Thanks for your insightful and encouraging comment. This actually helps me a lot. The community-aspect is totally right: I don't want to have the coworking environment poisoned with "get-rich-quick" people.

> You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses.

I will do! And I'll try to find words that sound encouraging to them. After all, most of them probably just want more freedom for themselves and the sketchy business ideas probably look like the simplest way to get there.

Excellent point. My mom got suckered by a couple of MLM schemes when I was a kid. She was very sharp but really wanted to improve our lives, and these people sold the opportunity angle really hard. Although it made me absolutely hate get-rich-quick schemes, I also know that the people caught up in them are generally sincere and well meaning.

Good luck with it! Feel free to drop me a line and let me know how it goes.

What about the people on YouTube who make decent children's shows/cartoons?

I think it's great because there's clear skill involved with the animating, story writing, illustrations, etc.

I think of self-awareness as similar to the problems of achieving consistency in a distributed system: it takes a lot of work to get right, and even then you probably missed things.

Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In my experience, when people have a strong financial interest in not being self aware, they will generally not be self aware. I can never decide whether that's legitimate or not.

Yeah, hate is a strong word. Then again helping people build generic crappy apps - which seems like is most of the user base - is probably disheartening.

I worked for a SEO company for about a year making SaaS tools to help "analyze keywords", "supply backlinks", "generate content" and other woo woo magic. Waking up and walking to work was fun for only the first month :/

Most of the users made crappy copy-paste websites and did whatever they could to get a better rank on search engines.

Why not expand it add more features help people create more compelling creations.

People who copy-paste crappy websites into life don’t lack the _tools_ to create ‘compelling creations’, they lack the will.

"I also came to the conclusion that AppyGEN didn’t really help make the world a better place like every other startup I read about. It seemed to me like it was just making the play store a worse place, helping non-developers publish hundreds of unoriginal apps that only took away from the visibility and chances of more ambitious apps."

I'm glad he got there in the article. But yes... He's not only doing what I would consider a net harm, but he's aware of it. And all that's before he added the referal scheme to it.

His take away at the end is good, don't do it for money (which is easy to say when you're making money), share with people as soon as you can, and be proud of what you're doing. How he got that last one after the realization he's making things worse - I don't know. Do as a say not as I do I suppose? I agree, he doesn't hate this app at all, he's just figured out a way to market it.

>a pyramid MLM

a single level referral system is not a MLM

It is perfectly possible to be conflicted about your product, in fact caring too much can be problematic for finding real product market fit. He probably does hate everything it stands for but loves building features that solve pain for his users.

>but loves building features that cause pain for his users.

Amusing typo

Haha, already corrected it as you were typing this, but I’m sure there is a market for an App that deliberately annoys its users (it’s called Windows 10 - ba dum ching).

I doubt it as well as a similar story about AppyGen didn't surface too long ago on the front page (couple of months at most).

That said, I do think app generators in general are a fun and cool idea. It's his target market more than anything else that makes it a spam machine.

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