There's little to gain from innovating on the landing page. A slick Wordpress template gets the job done just as well as a tailor-made landing page. Effort is better spent elsewhere (the product).
Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
41–50 of 135 posts
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#42I see the same in the consulting space - people who've barely ever talked to a prospect let alone had an actual customer (I happen to know from talking to folks like that) have a shiny website with pricing packages talking about "their team" and what not. Feels like pure hustle culture. I started my business a year ago, and there is no "we". There's me and (at this point) enough clients for comfortable living. I went…
> my answer is usually that I refuse to chose just one Refuse to choose. Not sure if spelling mistake or typo, but since everyone is doing feedback, thought I’d point it out.
Haha, thanks, I didn't even spell check this I guess. I also wrote "advise" as a noun in there...
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#43Co-founded a startup about a year ago. Also released a bunch of websites in the past 15 years.
The experience is really different now. It has become really easy to get the design and content 80% there with free tools. We’ve used goHugo with a template at first, it was faster than writing our HTML/CSS, but then discovered webflow and it was REALLY faster. Our non-technical co-founder could do really powerful customizations in there too without diverting efforts from the product. (Result here: https://www.hellodata.ai)
In essence, I don’t think people necessarily spend more time on their landing page now, but given that you can get 80% there by spending a weekend or two on your website, not doing it would almost feel sub-optimal.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#44I agree that in many cases people are puffing their feathers to try to be something they're not (at least not yet). Some believe in the fake it until you make it mentality.
With NeuML (https://neuml.com), the website is a simple HTML page. On social media, I'm honest about what NeuML is, that I'm in my 40s with a family and not striving to be the next Steve Jobs. I've been able to build a fairly successful open source project (txtai 6K stars https://github.com/neuml/txtai) and a revenue positive company. For me, authenticity and being genuine is most important. I would say that being genuine has been way more of an asset than liability.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#45You forget the SEO optimizations, the marketing campaigns, and the general fluff that is filling the Web.
Blandness is the common denominator, anything that is not fitting this schema doesn't fit to what the Web has become.
Edit: in part, the gatekeepers of the Web require this standardisation for their algorithms to handle human content.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#46All the low-hanging fruit has been picked. You can't start with just a crappy app that solves a problem, you have to get all the packaging around it right too.
I'm not a businessman, but I don't think so. Case in point: Beeminder. Their web app has a bit of an "unfinished" feel to it – definitely not a "modern SPA", rather a traditional Rails web app (not that it's something bad, quite the opposite!), but it solves a real problem and has stayed afloat for over 10 years now.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#47Haha check our scrappy website https://opral.com We got a bug report once that „the website is not loading“.
Wish I could work for an employer like this.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#48We noticed this pattern as well and actively decided against a flashy landing page (you know the one: dark background, large text on the left and interact-able glitzy Rubik’s cube/sphere/graph on the right, the one that spins/asjusts on command…)
Instead we put the product front and center — and people seem to like it. After some tweaks, our conversion from unique user to “Loop Creation” is now at 40%(!)
It lacks polish, but we don’t put up a facade: https://magicloops.dev
Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#49Re: Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?
#50I see the same in the consulting space - people who've barely ever talked to a prospect let alone had an actual customer (I happen to know from talking to folks like that) have a shiny website with pricing packages talking about "their team" and what not. Feels like pure hustle culture. I started my business a year ago, and there is no "we". There's me and (at this point) enough clients for comfortable living. I went…
Honestly, I liked your website. It's clean, minimalist, professional & to the point.
In future, I will make for myself similar one.