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IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

indiehackers.com

71–80 of 251 posts

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#71

While going from a blog-to-acquisition in less than a year is an impressive feat, there have been suspicious circumstances around IndieHackers submissions to Hacker News including clickbait titles that are frequently fixed by HN mods, and in one case, explicit voting manipulation with an attempt to bypass the voting ring detector via linking to /newest: http://i.imgur.com/08pAFOw.jpg This acquisition sends a disappoi…

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Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#72
IH is a refreshing flip side to the VC/YC narrative that's become canonical in the startup world! As againsit VC valuations, and pressure of growth at all costs (mostly profitability), IH companies prioritize organic, sustainable growth without loss of founder control. Many of them end up financially successful, which is inspiring to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Well done Courtland Allen! Without IH, this flip-side view of startups wouldn't have a platform.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#73
post #18

Patrick from Stripe here. I wanted to quickly chime in to emphasize that our goal in acquiring Indie Hackers is to simply ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible. The Stripe upside we're hoping for is that more companies get started and that they're more successful . We already see a very large fraction of new internet companies choose Stripe; we're mainly hoping that Indie Hackers can help us grow the…

Thanks for commenting and responding. Can you say a little more about how you hope to ensure it becomes successful? I mean, what can Stripe do to help the site? You might spend some money on it, but that might have been done more cheaply without acquiring it. Do you plan to add some sort of features? advertise it broadly?

The main thing we can do is free up Courtland to spend more time on it rather than having him sell ads. We're also going to invest in it so that his brother, Channing, can join him. On top of that, we expect that there'll be some Stripe users who'd benefit from discovering it earlier in their lifecycle and getting advice and feedback from other community members. Most people building a business on Stripe are doing it for the first time.

Longer term, there's a lot that we're interested in adding. (The site isn't even a year old yet -- check out https://indiehackers.com/timeline. There was no forum or podcast in the beginning.) But we're flexible on the details there and we'll experiment and adapt based on what we learn along the way.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#75
post #45

So in the spirit of what IH actually is, will the financial details be shared?

As much as I would personally love to share, there are of course other employees working at Stripe and other acquisitions that Stripe will make in the future, which complicates things. What I will do is try to be as transparent as I possibly can about what's going on behind-the-scenes, traffic numbers, product and growth strategy, etc. I've always thought it was cool that I got to talk about growing Indie Hackers its…

"No" would have been sufficient :)

Congrats though. That's huge. Any idea what will change yet as a result of the acquisition?

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#76

While going from a blog-to-acquisition in less than a year is an impressive feat, there have been suspicious circumstances around IndieHackers submissions to Hacker News including clickbait titles that are frequently fixed by HN mods, and in one case, explicit voting manipulation with an attempt to bypass the voting ring detector via linking to /newest: http://i.imgur.com/08pAFOw.jpg This acquisition sends a disappoi…

I am glad to see that I wasn't the only one who felt that IH were gaming the system and was treating their stories as spam.

It does make me suspicious as to if HN admins treat YC alumni more equal than others.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#77
post #70

While going from a blog-to-acquisition in less than a year is an impressive feat, there have been suspicious circumstances around IndieHackers submissions to Hacker News including clickbait titles that are frequently fixed by HN mods, and in one case, explicit voting manipulation with an attempt to bypass the voting ring detector via linking to /newest: http://i.imgur.com/08pAFOw.jpg This acquisition sends a disappoi…

Speaking as a random HN user (but I suspect I am not alone in this opinion), I rather dislike HN's approach to anti-vote-manipulation, and so I don't see the message as disappointing. (If anything, vote manipulation / growth hacking is perfectly within the HN mindset: there's this entrenched organization that controls access for no other reason than that they got entrenched, and people are finding innovative technica…

What? No, the "entrenched organization" that regulates voting rings exists to keep HN from turning into a morass of marketing puff. The quality of the submissions and comments are literally the only thing of value here.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#78

Does this mean IndieHackers become the propaganda arm for Stripe's customers? Or is this a goodwill purchase? Maybe it's cheaper than a national ad buy targeted directly at potential new customers?

IndieHackers' founder got really good at getting startups to provide detailed information, and then also on publicizing the crap out of IH itself. If I had to guess, Stripe wants that skillset in marketing (or "growth hacking" or whatever else the cool kids call it now). All of that can feed Stripe's customer pipeline.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#79

2 months ago, HN was ripping apart IH: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 But at HN, it seems we have short memories and money triumphs morality.

The thread you link to is about a story which was published on IH. Sure, publishing this story wasn't a highlight for IH, but starting two swing the morality hammer is a bit much.

read it again, they were ripping IH for letting dubious submissions through without proper vetting.

2017 Feb: "I'm never using IH again"

2017 April: "I love IH"

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#80

2 months ago, HN was ripping apart IH: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 But at HN, it seems we have short memories and money triumphs morality.

The thread you link to is about a story which was published on IH. Sure, publishing this story wasn't a highlight for IH, but starting two swing the morality hammer is a bit much.

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