Ask HN: Faking it until you make it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Faking it until you make it?

14 pointsrobpa8 comments

Hello HN. I've got an interesting idea for a side project, but I'm a front end guy with zero programming knowledge. I see neat side projects frequently on HN, and of course they're almost always fully self coded from the ground up and created with something like App Engine or Heroku.

I could easily start my idea out on something like Tumblr or Wordpress.com, but my question is: Is it possible to still be taken legitimately as a site/service if my idea was to use one of those? Or would I be laughed off of the internet/HN for appearing amateur? At some point when I'm able to pay a freelancer, I'd want to have the site built from scratch and self hosted - but I don't have that option at the current time.

I've heard that Groupon started out on Wordpress, but I'm sure they still had large amounts of custom plugin development. Are there any other startups that started this way?

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I don't believe your idea only gets one shot, necessarily. You measure customer feedback and iterate. Just build it and build a profitable business. Then come back and tell us how your successful web business started out, or still uses, Wordpress. Wordpress is VERY functional for many startup uses, so as long as your copy, design and UI are up to snuff, and your service is the best you can make it, you have a decent chance.

Just go for it. Don't worry so much about things like this. Give your project passion, that's all it needs.

In my mind, this is the same as asking if its okay to not use linen for my biz cards.. it doesn't matter.

Just to clarify, Heroku and App Engine are essentially just a new breed of hosts, these applications aren't exactly created with Heroku or App Engine, they are using other frameworks that can be used on any host (or at least a lot of other hosts), they are being deployed and hosted there. Tumblr and Wordpress are primarily blogging engines so unless you're just starting a blog they probably won't get you far. What I would suggest looking into are web application frameworks, for example a lot of people who use Heroku are using Ruby on Rails, you don't need to know anything about Heroku to use Ruby on Rails, instead you can run everything locally while developing and learning and only later do you need to worry about pushing up to a host

Techcrunch is hosted on wordpress.com - sure it's the VIP service but there are tons of big sites on WordPress. Either spend some time customizing a theme or look to spend $50-$100 on a premium theme - this will make you look much more professional, and there are many themes out there that don't even look like WordPress. If your idea will work on WordPress (or tumblr) then I think you're crazy not to use it.

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/

I'd actually be more impressed if you start making money and validate your idea without writing a line of code.

go do it :)

I'd actually give you more respect if you'd validate the idea without writing code. Use whatever method gets your idea in front of potential customers for feedback the fastest.

If you're selling a product or a service, I'd even suggest creating a buy button that takes them to a coming soon page and then put analytics on the button. See how many people actually click the buy button (even though they can't buy anything).

>> Or would I be laughed off of the internet/HN for appearing amateur?

No you won't. Not on HN at least. Be yourself and make what you love, everything gonna be alright.

Really cool of you to say that. It's interesting as well cause there have been a number of topics on HN recently about the increasingly negative trend in general feedback.

I certainly hope that people like myself and FredBrach can think of engaging on here without being 'laughed off'.

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