I like this as brilliant guerrilla marketing for CodeSketch. I had honestly never heard of it before this offer. Brilliant move for CodeSketch to effectively advertise free on HN (Compete.com says ~250,000 unique monthly visitors) in order to build new loyalty for CodeSketch (Compete.com says ~10,000 unique monthly visitors).

I'd love a follow-up report in a couple months, in the style of Bingo Card Creator.

Yes - and it's the perfect match of a just-big-enough blog, and a community that supports these kinds of gestures. Either way, it's a good gesture, nobody gets hurt, and we get exposed to a cool blog like CodeSketch.

Quick update: 13 companies already submitted Apps for review. Some absolutely stunning work is sitting in my inbox right now, and I can't wait to dig in deeper.

Thanks for the kind words and I'll be sure to keep HN updated!

The "Too long, didn't read" version: Thanks for sharing your experiences while you build your startup. We want to help you by allowing you to advertise your startup on our site for free for the rest of the summer (end of August).

I'm not so sure you want people who are too lazy to read your four-paragraph post to advertise.

Maybe, but it's useful for the 95% of us for whom this doesn't apply (because we don't have a startup). I don't have time to read every story on HN, so I'll often check the comments first to determine whether it's worth reading the article. His post told me everything I needed to know about the article without me having to read the details that don't apply to me.

(But yes, in this case it only saved me a whopping 30 seconds because it was only 4 paragraphs)

Cool. Do you have to have a credit card on file?

Nope.

Thanks! Sent in a request.

Quick update: I've been contacted by 24 Companies in the last 6 hours and I've been impressed with the quality of services. HNers are working on some really cool projects! I'm working on personally getting back with each company, so don't feel bad if I haven't gotten to yours yet (I will by tomorrow at the latest).

Thanks for the encouraging responses, and keep up the great work HNers!

Great idea. Great marketing. I'll withdraw because I have no personal need that is great, others need it more right now.

Wish more blogs do this.

Great Idea, great offer, I'll send my pitch email. do you have any limitations ?(something like the first 20, only x peoples, since you have 2 to 3 adspaces to offer or it just needs to be interesting for your audience?).

This is a great idea. If I was only finished with my project. Couple months off.

Everyone has been contacted. I will have the 3 selected by the end of the week. Thanks for all of your submissions (around 35)! Lots of really quality services!

This is great! Thanks for the offer.

This seems like a nice gesture to be sure. The cynic in me can't help but wondering whether you're going to get more traffic from this offer than the selected startups will get from the free advertising. Does codesketch.com have traffic?

Yes, codesketch has traffic (not massive, but respectable). It's relatively new (launched in December), and has been averaging 10,000+ hits a week. More importantly, we've found a strong niche that loves technology and design. Based on analytics, our readers are tech savvy and have some cash. I know already that some of the startup submissions will be a perfect fit.

This is just a sincere thank you to the community for helping me grow.

10k hits, really? I'm getting only a little less than that per day on a very small time personal blog... traffic profile and engagement are, of course, more important than raw numbers however.

I'm sure your next months hits will be higher!

Just saying thanks, every little bit counts.

Thanks for this! I already sent my pitch.