justiceforsaas

Do you have an in-between step when you go from planning to execution? Eg. have a PLAN.md file you then ask the execution model to implement.

Honestly the code gen part has been “good enough” for a while now, especially with models like Opus. The broader point this post is making is that newer SOTA models are improving at the "planning layer", and this is usually the the part a senior developer would usually handle (identifying edge cases, thinking ahead, thinking about tradeoffs, etc.)

Are you suggesting these AI agents can write code 24/7 without a single error or getting stuck? In my experience (and I think plenty of others would confirm this), you're lucky if they can run smoothly for even 5 minutes without hitting some kind of problem that needs human intervention.

That's also what I thought. Instead of using fire extinguishers, FB/Apple/Google are adding more gasoline to the fire.

This is going to radicalize people (especially conspiracy theorists) who now think have actual, indisputable "proof" these companies are there to get them.

Facebook is probably a bad acquisition channel for many SaaS businesses, especially after this week news on FB managers trashing their own ad targeting [1]. I do a little project where I analyze founder interviews, trying to discover which acquisition channels consistently work for founders [2] and around 90% of founders who mentioned FB as an acquisition channel working for them, also mentioned at least 2-3 more major channels (like AdWords, partnerships, SEO, etc.) [3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25529479

[2] https://www.firstpayingusers.com

[3] The only exception were e-commerce companies, they were much more likely to rely solely on FB vs. SaaS Companies

> We opened the floodgates. We shared the project on Twitter and Instagram, posted to HN and wrote a medium post. But, try as we might, no one was signing up.

Later in the post:

> Had we had more funding, we would have taken the time to rewrite our app in $ELITELANG instead. Our startup could have been a unicorn.

Although this is satire, it's something a lot of funded startups do. They think they've solved user acquisition by getting investors money (hey, let's throw a couple thousands at Google/FB Ads, although there are 15+ viable acquisition channels we could try [1]), and spend time on building things in their own bubble.

Also, the launch mention is pretty accurate:

> We launched v2 of our product with a splash.

Wonder if many startups would have better results if flipped the switch and treated product creation as a "launch" (a bunch of big sprints with a deadline) and user acquisition as something they do steadily, over a period of time.

[1] https://zerotousers.substack.com/p/15-acquisition-channels-i...

Guys, add a search box where people can enter their site & see "if they quality". If they don't, and enter their site again (and are <1MB), maybe you can add them in a "Recent improvers" list. I think this will motivate even more websites to participate.

I've looked at the themes and it looks like many of them were inspired from MRA (Male Right Activists) community. I think it's an important day to raise awareness of some important issues that men face in today's society, including the high suicide rate (as compared to women), the overall lower life expectancy and so on.

Just curious: What's the difference between Substack and RSS? With RSS, you 'subscribe' -> get blog posts to your news reader. With Substack, you 'subscribe' => get blog posts to your inbox. Of course, they allow you to monetize your posts by adding Stripe etc, but the essence seems to be the same.

Is there a particular logical reason why Facebook required these people to get back to office? Is it related to productivity? Would be curious to hear Facebook's take on this.

In one comment you said that the contrarian dynamic works on HN threads and to internet comments in general.

I just went and opened 10 random Reddit threads on the front page to read the top comments, and found only 2 where this was true, and 8 where this was totally false, most notably [1].

The main reason for negative comments here on HN (IMO) is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People have learned that usually the #1 comment is a negative one, so you have a bunch of people "competing" to be #1 by trying to nitpick whatever is wrong with the original article (even if there is none) in hope to win the popularity contest.

This is why I've seen some friends recently leave HN (their exact words: "couldn't hand the toxicity"). I hope that you, as a Head of Growth, can actively work to break this cycle.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/jw8xbe/if_w...

Oh, sorry, I haven't seen it. Saw it now. Is there a way to get in touch?

The gist of the article is: The OP created a tiny project, launched it on Product Hunt/Hacker News, and moved to creating another project. I'm glad he acknowledges the problem with this:

"A Product Hunt launch can easily get you a spike in traffic, but afterwards I really don't know what I'm doing".

Here are some tips to help with this:

1) Explore more "steady" acquisition channels. Yes, PH/HN are "spike-y" channels and they're often not enough to have a business generating sustainable income. Read "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg (I'm also doing some research on this topic [1]).

2) Maybe flip the script and do the opposite? Choose 1 or 2 promising projects, and do "six months of exploring user acquisition". Test SEO, FB/Google Ads, partnerships, affiliates, appstores and so on.

Good luck!

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

> I’d bet there’s few “micro-bets” that are generating any meaningful amount of money.

That's the whole point of micro-bets. You acknowledge the fact that a small % of them will generate any meaningful $, so you deliberately minimize your losses by making the bets small.

I think you've gone from one extreme to the other. Yes, building a product with no distribution sucks. So does doing distribution without having anything to show for it.

Take this from a guy who spent 2 years studying distribution channels [1]. There's nothing wrong about spending a week or two developing a MVP before focusing on distribution.

I think the key is to start with 1) The minimum thing you can do and call a 'product' 2) Try to promote/distribute it to see the response. So far you've done:

a) A web page explaining what your product is about

Some steps to (progressively) get to a "better" MVP may be:

b) Make a video showcasing your product (which can be a simple Figma design with static screens that show once you click on them)

c) Build a feature that's high on the ICE Scoring model [2], and distribute that

d) Build a meaningfully different feature than c) and promote it as a SEPARATE product. Let your features be like split tests you promote on the same/different distribution channels and see how they perform.

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://university.hygger.io/en/articles/2288376-ice-scoring

Literally describes 100% of IndieHackers threads about "I sold 540 copies of my products on Twitter in 8 hours".

Why is everyone so obsessed with ideas? Out of everything needed to succeed with a startup (idea, audience, acquisition channels, competition), the "startup idea" is the thing you can ALWAYS change. It's the thing you have the most control over.

That's not the case, however, with acquisition channels (a topic I write extensively about [1]), or your audience (they come with pre-defined beliefs/behaviors that are hard to change.)

Having this in mind, it makes more sense to focus first on analyzing a) The audience b) The channels through which you can reach to them. Once you get enough knowledge about these 2, you can create a pretty good startup idea WITHIN these constraints.

This is why people have invented things like market-product fit or product-channel fit [2]. I'd like to add that you're more likely to succeed if you FIT your idea TO the channel/audience, rather than doing the reverse.

Would love to hear other perspectives on this topic.

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://brianbalfour.com/essays/product-channel-fit-for-grow...

From reading the article, the main reason seems like having (way) less competition. Especially with cheaper acquisition channels (I've been doing research [1] on this topic for 2+ years and noticed this trend), where you have less businesses advertise on Facebook/Google, bringing CPC costs down.

I wonder if the "law of shitty clickthroughts" [2] applies here as well. What if you have a huge # of founders reading the advice; acting on it and starting new businesses just because Paul Graham told them so? Then starting a startup in a bad economy would no longer be an advantage. Somewhere in May Gumroad founder tweeted that they have record numbers of people signing up, and that may be an early sign that thing sort of thing is already happening.

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://andrewchen.co/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/

It's painfully obvious this article was written by an investor for several reasons:

1) They define "growth" as a stage that goes AFTER raising money. As a founder, growth (planning, executing) should come before you ask for a single dollar (unless you're something like a hardware startup that needs bigger upfront investment). I write about this topic extensively [1] and one of the main differences I found between successful vs. failed founders is whether or not they found viable acquisition channels from the moment they started. Also, in many cases, raising money (too fast) was associated with a bigger chance of failure.

2) They associate a "startup" with getting financing rounds. 0 mentions for bootstrapped founders. Last time I checked [2], a startup is "a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable economic model."

A better title for this article would be would be: "There are only 3 startup stages for funded startups requiring bigger upfront investment".

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company

Yes. Their app store is also a pretty good acquisition channel (I do research on this topic [1]). Here are some relevant quotes I found from my DB:

1. Credible ($2.5k/mo), a Shopify app to display recent sales:

"The other primary source of growth has been through Shopify itself. Shopify is amazing at promoting their apps. They take a 20% cut of your subscription fees, but it's well worth it in what they provide for you. When you first launch an app on the store, they feature it in the "New & Upcoming" section for store owners to get a first glimpse of your app. After you prove yourself with some solid growth and positive reviews, they will feature you in the main "Featured" section of the store. Both of these were huge for our growth. When Shopify put us on their main featured page, we netted about 180 new recurring customers." [2]

2. Shogun ($4.5k/mo), drag-and-drop page builder:

"When we launched on Shopify, sales began to trickle in and have been growing ever since. We've been attracting users in the Shopify app store from the beginning with very little marketing, and we got featured by Shopify fairly early on, which gave us a good boost. Now most of our new customers are through word of mouth or the Shopify app store." [3]

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my-app-to-...

[3] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/struggles-we-faced-bu...

This is an interesting case study, but my research on acquisition channels that consistently work for founders [1] has shown that sponsoring blogs/web-based "real estate" is hit-or-miss (and doesn't work) for most founders. Here are some dev SaaS examples:

1. SnapShooter ($1k+/mo), a tool to create daily backups of DigitalOcean droplets:

" I tried sponsoring blog articles with a little bit of success." [2]

2. BugFender ($35k/mo), a log storage service for app devs:

"Here's what didn't work: sponsoring developer newsletters and podcasts" [3]

The reason for this (IMO) is that most products that advertise themselves (especially on dev blogs) are not unique/compelling enough. Why should you buy a sponsored app logger when you know 10 other look-alikes with 5 other friends using them? The fact that these guys managed to invest $6k and get $200k in return from sponsoring a blog just shows how unique/compelling/valuable their value prop. is. Good luck!

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-starting-small-he...

[3] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/turning-an-internal-c...