Comment by 0dKD | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0dKD | Hacker News Reader

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Love the input!

I just entertained the thought that since so many startups fail, we need a lot more "going into the funnel". More startups created. All around me i see incubators and div stuff meant to help startups, but not many things that lower the threshold for actually starting and creating new ones. Maybe we need to "lure" or nudge people into them.

I think its on the side for more reasons than marketing. In our community we have people that have a small beer app for hobby reasons that isnt meant to take off, so its designed to generate some revenue and be on the side for ever. But yeah, for some projects that want to be bigger, marketing is an issue (Although the founder of this forum would argue that if marketing is the problem, then really the product is the problem, since internet makes genuinely good things spread so easily by word of mouth)

Yeah the tools we use and writing and everything is scrappy. I have a weird thought about it being an asset in todays world where more and more things are so glossy and AI generated. Just makes me want to see some spelling errors. Some dirty and real stuff. But i might be wrong. I dont want to be slick though, or proper, i want to be as dirty and scrappy as a SideProject is when youre bogged down by life and work and it all

Love your way of engaging by the way, direct but not without empathy!

> since so many startups fail, we need a lot more "going into the funnel"

Yeah, that makes sense. Probably best to attack it from both directions.

> Although the founder of this forum would argue that if marketing is the problem, then really the product is the problem, since internet makes genuinely good things spread so easily by word of mouth

I disagree from my experience.

I'm certainly biased here, but my data shows that of those who use my product, many (30% recently) convert to paying users, and I've had users recommend it to other people.

Problem is, I have twenty of them.

Word-of-mouth is an exponential, but more on the order of 1.001^x than e^x.

> I have a weird thought about it being an asset in todays world where more and more things are so glossy and AI generated.

I've been trying this with my marketing. I began obsessed with seeming professional (perhaps a little insecurity - I'm 18), but I've been leaning way from that more recently in some of my reddit ads. As far as I can tell, it's a valley.

If you execute "scrappy" well, but not quite too scrappy that people are unsure you know what you're doing, it works well.

If you execute "professional" well, it seems to do well. Not so sure here.

If you get somewhere in the middle, you just seem incompetent.

Still, when it comes to grammar, I personally prefer prose that is technically correct but clearly written by a human rather than a vacuously cheery LLM.

> Love your way of engaging by the way, direct but not without empathy!

Thanks. I used to write in a very verbose and extravagant manner, and I've been trying to slim it down. In retrospect, I'm not quite sure I like the change, and it's difficult to go back. Ah well.

I havent experienced marketing being irrelevant myself either. But i think his point is interesting, maybe most products arent great enough to reap the benefits of x^y, so marketing still has a place.

Great reflections on the scrappyness! Haha i just think you are a year ahead of me in these reflections. I will conclude on the same i think. Agree on all.

Im from Norway, so i probably make some unwilling errors as well.

But right now, as it often is in an startup, i just feel there are more important things for me to fix. 36 y old and two kids here, limited time.

No, your writing has landed where it should! Im reading "on writing well" to trying to improve my writing. Great book. With conciseness like you have then your personal style can show more easily by small words here and there

You sound like a "fierce nerd" in the best possible mening, if youre thinking like this at 18 then you will achieve huge things!

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