Good: The top left logo on your blog links to your website.
Bad: The first and last mention of Debuggex in the body text should be a link to your product.
Why I am building a product with a tiny market
31–40 of 120 posts
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#32Interestingly, it seems like a lot of this is essentially a generalization of the advantages of B2B.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#33Good: The top left logo on your blog links to your website. Bad: The first and last mention of Debuggex in the body text should be a link to your product.
This was somewhat intentional. I had a larger plug at the beginning initially. I decided it did not seem genuine enough, and would take away from the content.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#34Interesting perspective. And regarding debuggex.com itself... Awesome. I'll be using it in the future. Nice work.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#35I'm in the same boat - building something I really want to build and use myself, not really caring much about product-market fit or any of that other stuff.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#36That's a really cool little tool, and I think you're building a very lucrative audience.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#37Side note about debuggex.com itself: The "Phone Number" example is a bad idea. Please either remove it or otherwise relabel it to warn against using it.
Rationale: Almost everywhere in the world outside of US and Canada, phone numbers do not look like that, and interacting with websites that assume they do is frustrating. Even USians or Canadians may want to enter a phone number with an extension, which would get rejected by that regular expression (a colleague of mine got frustrated to no end by websites and bureaucracy assuming the 3-3-4 style of phone numbers when she moved to Canada, because she prefers not to use a cell phone too much, and her work number has an extension).
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#38Side note about debuggex.com itself: The "Phone Number" example is a bad idea. Please either remove it or otherwise relabel it to warn against using it. Rationale: Almost everywhere in the world outside of US and Canada, phone numbers do not look like that, and interacting with websites that assume they do is frustrating. Even USians or Canadians may want to enter a phone number with an extension, which would get rej…
Ah good point. I thought I had labeled it "US Phone Number" at one point. I'll try to find another example of similar difficulty.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#39Good: The top left logo on your blog links to your website. Bad: The first and last mention of Debuggex in the body text should be a link to your product.
This was somewhat intentional. I had a larger plug at the beginning initially. I decided it did not seem genuine enough, and would take away from the content.
You are clearly genuine, but also a little naive business wise.
Please give this a read and let me know where the right place to link is, if not here.
1. You are giving me quality content about your business experiences and decisions.
2. You are giving me this information on a blog supporting a product which, by the way you've crafted the blog post, seems likely to be professional and loved.
3. I'm a person who makes and uses regexps, a HN reader and I want to check out the product. I want to do this easily. The web uses links to do this. You've earned the right to link. It is exactly when you should. It is directly relevant and it is in "your home".
If you are in business, this is why you wrote the blog post. You've got me right where you want me. I'm interested and I have money. Make the path between "he should have my money" and "he has my money" as easy as possible. Link.
Let me use a crude dating analogy:
1. Meet interesting person.
2. Invite person to dinner.
3. Groom, clean, prepare, cook, present, share dinner.
4. Goes well, clicks, everyone is interested.
5. Interesting person leans in for kiss.
6. You back away, saying the kiss would take away from the lovely evening.
The kiss, and the relationship it hints at, is the point of the evening.
And since I see the horse, while on the ground, is still kicking somewhat and not all the way dead:
You are in business or you are not. If you are, know this and live by it:
Do the prep work, then ask, ask, ask. The worst that happens is no.
You've got a great product. Good luck.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#40I fed it a favorite regex... Bravo. Unfortunately, the permalinking fails with this particular regex, or I'd include it here. The visualization is so large, it more than fills my large screen. Still, pretty cool to see it render instantaneously and to watch it match example text. The regex is described here: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~cameron/REX.html
It will match either text or XML markup (it's used to tokenize XML), so try example text like 'abc' or 'abc'.
The JavaScript form of the regex follows: [^-([^-][^-]-)->?)?|\[CDATA\[([^]]]([^]]+])]+([^]>][^]]]([^]]+])]+)>)?|DOCTYPE([ \n\t\r]+([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])([ \n\t\r]+(([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])|"[^"]"|'[^']'))([ \n\t\r]+)?(\[(-([^-][^-]-)->|[^-]([^]"'>"|'[^']')>)|\?([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])(\?>|[\n\r\t ][^?]\?+([^>?][^?]\?+)>))|%([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F]);|[ \n\t\r]+)]([ \n\t\r]+)?)?>?)?)?|\?(([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])(\?>|[\n\r\t ][^?]\?+([^>?][^?]\?+)>)?)?|/(([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])([ \n\t\r]+)?>?)?|(([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])([ \n\t\r]+([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])([ \n\t\r]+)?=([ \n\t\r]+)?("[^"|'[^'))*([ \n\t\r]+)?/?>?)?)