Ask HN: Could "Show HN" be shooting your site in the foot? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Could "Show HN" be shooting your site in the foot?

27 pointsmstret21 comments

What is the purpose of showing your site to other entrepreneurs?

To show off your technical accomplishments to other techies even if that means handing your idea on a silver platter to other capable would-be entrepreneurs to work on?

"Ideas are a dime a dozen", I hear you say.

"Only execution matters."

Well, regardless, your execution is now or imminently in competition with that of other developers who read about you right here.

It seems to me a lot of "Show HN" is a cheap excuse for claiming you've done your part to drive traffic to your site, even if that traffic does not feed your bottom line and could run against your self-interest.

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I often show ideas to my techy friends prior to releasing them, including on HN. People are often kind enough to give feedback. Some of that feedback has to be taken with a grain of salt, but I've definitely picked up an idea or thirty here that were big wins for my business. It is also enormously motivational for me to be able to share with people who understand where I'm coming from -- indeed, I really doubt I would have a business were it not for my Internet sanity outlets.

I am fairly open about my business, down to publishing sales stats, and every product I've ever released has been cloned. That is not a significant problem for my business. There is no beautician in the United States who is currently not using Appointment Reminder because it was cloned. There is a metric truckload who are not using it because my marketing is, to a first approximation, terrible. I optimize my efforts to improving the marketing rather than avoiding clones.

I'm with you on "driving traffic" being a value-destroying mindset, but do not agree that most people participate on HN to drive traffic.

Well, regardless, your execution is now or imminently in competition with that of other developers who read about you right here.

How many motivated, hard-working, capable people do you think are lurking here, just waiting for somebody to drop an idea in their lap? Wouldn't the motivated, hard-working, capable people most likely already have their own projects to worry about, and therefore lack the resources to jump on "your" idea? And do you really care about the people who aren't motivated, hard-working and capable?

Personally I wouldn't hesitate in the slightest to talk about my project(s) here... anybody who's terribly likely to represent competition to me, probably either already is, or would be so anyway. And the rest are just gonna read, go "uh huh" and move on to the next comment.

Heck, I'm so unconcerned about "idea theft" that all my source code is open-source, and under the Apache license.

And to avoid an accusation of hypocrisy:

http://www.fogbeam.com

http://code.google.com/p/screwpile

edit: to be fair though, what I'm building isn't a "site," it's enterprise software, although a SaaS offering could be in the cards down the road. So my case doesn't technically fit the OP's question as worded. But I still stand by the contention that sharing here is most likely harmless.

Case in point: Nobody has cloned reddit's code and built another reddit. Of course, they're selling the community, not the code, so don't go around open sourcing your SaaS thing.

I may have missed your point, but there were a couple of reddit clones floating around at one point. No doubt they're all dead by now, but not for lack of effort.

By "built another reddit" I meant one that got even remotely comparable traffic. The difficulty in making another reddit isn't writing the code, let's put it that way.

> What is the purpose of showing your site to other entrepreneurs?

Mostly to get feedback. Sometimes to get a little pat on the back, especially if motivation is dragging. But I suspect mostly it's to get sanity-checks and feedback for improvement.

Sometimes you've been so working hard on something that you're too close to it to evaluate it properly. Taking a few steps back from your project and getting feedback from HN is really handy for finding out whether you're in the weeds or not.

I've gotten incredibly useful feedback from my "Show HN" posts, without which I'd probably not have even continued my projects.

As for driving traffic, there's certainly an aspect of that, but mostly in the sense of establishing a toe-hold in the Google index and getting links from people who like what you produce and then later blog about you. I don't think (most) people are trolling for clients/customers here.

No the feedback is invaluable and makes you think and work/strive towards a better execution.

I posted my start-up here a long, long time ago. The feedback i got was invaluable and over the years as we've bootstrapped and worked on the concept privately(amidst our daily bump n grinds) ... the feedback(positive & negative) pushed us to think how to create this concept so its enjoyable, fun, as well as useful.

Happy to say a few years later we will be finally launching the core concept in next few days.

So thank you Hacker News!

    >>What is the purpose of showing your site to other entrepreneurs?

I have to wonder what percentage of people on this site are entrepreneurs or just hackers that like cool stuff? I think the feedback from the latter could be invaluable for people just launching their website.

> To show off your technical accomplishments to other techies even if that means handing your idea on a silver platter to other capable would-be entrepreneurs to work on?

This line of reasoning is horribly flawed. And besides, if someone other than you can take your idea, copy it, and eat your lunch... then they kind of deserve their success. At the "Show HN" stage, you already have something built, right? That means that even assuming that the mysterious "badass-hacker just sitting on HN waiting for an idea to copy" even exists, you should be far enough ahead that it doesn't matter.

Unless the target market is techie/entrepreneur, I can't imagine anyone using HN as a marketing tool. Instead, I think most "Show HN" posts are requests for feedback from an audience who is generally pretty smart about UX/marketing/conversion.

As for competition, any Show HN posts that show off successful sites are successful because of a lot of reasons. I haven't seen a rash of Bingo Card Creator competitors or Balsamiq competitors-- and they are two of the most open "Show HN" guys that I can think of. Their businesses are continuing to prosper/grow.

"Don't worry about other people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."—Howard Aiken

I keep seeing that quote on HN, but never any reason to believe it. It's cute, and but plays to an odd kind of elitism that doesn't match my experience with people.

I'll grant that there are some ideas where some particular knowledge and foresight is needed to appreciate the value, but a lot of ideas are good precisely because they establish a connection between seemingly disjoint things that, in retrospect, seems obvious.

Okay, let's turn that around. Are you saying that there is such a thing as a good idea that is easily replicated and indefensible? Such that if you show it to other entrepreneurs on HN someone can quickly copy it and beat you to the market?

If so, why are you doing it?

This is exactly the kind of question VCs used to ask. Why this, why now, and why you. If showing it to HN will cause people to say, "oh, that's obvious" and rush out to copy it, you are lacking an answer to the question "why you."

"If so, why are you doing it?"

Because first to market makes a difference?

Because a good idea may also require a good implementation, which (depending on the idea) not everyone can pull off?

Because not every good idea is meant as VC fodder? You do it fast, milk it for what you can, and accept that eventually others will copy it and spoil the party.

Because a good idea may also require a good implementation, which (depending on the idea) not everyone can pull off?

My point exactly. "Why me" is "Because I'm the best in the world at doing this."

Do it fast, milk it for what you can, and accept that eventually others will copy it and spoil the party.

I agree. If you're in the game to do something fast, milk it for $$$, and then get out, then don't post it on HN. Not only is it not in your best interest, I can't imagine it being interesting to anyone besides another person in the game to do stuff fast and get out.

What you ought to post on HN is your business plan for having "deal flow," a funnel full of "do it fast" ideas. Some companies demonstrate a knack for constantly identifying and capitalizing on these temporary ideas and exploiting them.

That "meta-plan" for building a repeatable business would be damn interesting.

I don't know how widespread it is, but I personally am less likely to pursue something I see a 'Show HN' post. There's enough unexploited opportunities out there that if I see someone's already got a good handle on an idea, I'll probably cross it off my list of things to try and go for one of the other many ideas on the 'maybe TODO' list.

I can't say it'd never turn out the other way, but it'd have to be a really good idea that exactly fit my interests, but where the implementation being shown off was so bad that it seemed easy to beat.

From what I have observed, it seems to be a two-edged sword and can go either way, but a lot appears to depend upon how it is done. Some folks do appear to post it here primarily in hopes of getting a traffic spike. I imagine many of them are pretty disappointed because those posts tend to be boring and seem to not get much response. Others are obviously looking for feedback they couldn't get too many places. Those posts seem to generally go over better and accomplish more.

I show most of my creations to a friend of mine who is an IT entrepreneur. He is not in my target group, but he knows the subject of usability well and that allows him to give me good points for improvement. Showing things to HN is similar.

Also it's the best possible market research. You show what you did to people and people tell you of similar things that already exist. No kind of passive surfing or googling can beat that.

Getting feedback from technically savvy (or at least interested) people can be very valuable, and you're right, ideas are a dime a dozen.

Someone has to see it to buy it in the first place right?

It's not a zero-sum game.

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