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AngelList acquires Product Hunt

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Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#251

Post by ci5er »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #241
ci5er wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Growth Hackers Based on its usage in these last two comments, I think I must not understand what the phrase "Growth Hacker" means. I thought it was someone who was critically focused on increasing the numerator and decreasing the denominator in various SaaS KPIs. You don't seem to be using it that way. Is this a new job title in the Bay Area? Or, more generally: would you define this phrase for me?

I think they mean the people that are basically marketers/sales people who aren't creators and despite often thinking so aren't visionaries either. The type of person that "just needs someone to do that nerd shit" and they'll turn it into a huge success. Like the two guys that flew from London to show up Justin Kan's house uninvited. Which isn't to say that can't be successful. With a piece of shit MVP coded by the w…

I think I know the kind you are talking about. They show up on Quora wondering how they can get a co-founder to do all the tech work for 30% of the company -- IF they can find someone who won't balk at signing an NDA to get a glimpse at their super-duper amazing idea. Thanks!

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#252

Post by pryelluw »

kristianc wrote: post #193
visakanv wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just hit on one of the fundamental reasons why all online communities tend towards toxicity – the people who have the most time and energy to invest in discussions (which eventually snowball into flame wars) are the people who aren't actually doing the actual work. These things then feed off of themselves – in a sociopolitical 'guardian' type community (/r/atheism, /r/childfree, etc etc) it ends up becoming highl…

This is what has killed Twitter. Both social justice Twitter and right-wing Twitter revolve around competing for status-points, and backslapping (the latest trend is linking to other people's egotistical tweetstorms along with a comment like 'This' or 'Thread'. Very little challenge of ideas takes place - either from within communities or from outside. The whole thing has become a Wittgensteinian language game where…

I still find value on Twitter. The problems you define are real, but that means you have to dig a little deeper to connect with good people.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#253

Post by wingerlang »

dang wrote: post #235
wingerlang wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention it but I just want to reinforce it. I don't go to PH at all but I see the issue on HN all the time. People writing a comment and suddenly the "at [company], we bla bla..."

Really? I don't see it all the time, and I think a little bit of referring to your own company/startup in relevant contexts is ok. If people overdo it, we ask them to stop (and in extreme cases ban them), so feel free to email hn@ycombinator.com if someone is overdoing it.

I might just be that the comments I do read (in relevant contexts or not) stands out for me a lot due to their predictive formula.

Is there some way to search comments for regex? Just for my curiosity.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#254

Post by shellehs »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #16

As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than people who actually make things. But I also realize this was because they raised tons of money and was under heavy pressure to get traction at any cost. So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of arti…

I look PH as a very good place to promote products, and it's born to promote products. No matter it's a good or bad product, they all don't want to miss a chance to reach their customers.

> True users vote for USEFUL and/or LOVELY products for themselves, growth hackers try their best to drive users vote for specific products.

I can't see that's good or evil, growth hacking may hurt the community, or may bring a lot of users and traffic in a short period.

And I think every community has possibility to become a place for growth hackers if it needs to attract more users and grow bigger.

Just like every corner has possibility to become a place for advertisements. If I don't like it, I just ignore it. And that also makes opportunity for competitors or products like ad-block to stand out.

Anyway I love PH and really feel sad for the acquisition.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#255

Post by haydenlee »

rhizome wrote: post #204
freddyc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point - too often realism is mis-labeled as cynicism by those who have drunk a little too much of the Kool-Aid. It's one of the things about SV that gradually wore me down over time: the constant need for people to declare everything great because to admit otherwise (i.e. accept reality) went against the prevailing start-up ethos.

"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who don't have it."

Although, to be fair "cynical observation is often called cynicism by everyone" too.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#256

Post by dang »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #246
dang wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I don't see it all the time, and I think a little bit of referring to your own company/startup in relevant contexts is ok. If people overdo it, we ask them to stop (and in extreme cases ban them), so feel free to email hn@ycombinator.com if someone is overdoing it.

It generally annoys me when I see it no matter what site I'm on but you're right, on here it's rare and more importantly this is HN so you should expect a bit here and there. Most of the time these people are just excited about something they're creating.

> just excited about something they're creating

Well put. That's the kind we want to encourage, and if someone goes beyond that and overdoes it, it's not hard to take care of.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#257

Post by dang »

wingerlang wrote: post #253
dang wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I don't see it all the time, and I think a little bit of referring to your own company/startup in relevant contexts is ok. If people overdo it, we ask them to stop (and in extreme cases ban them), so feel free to email hn@ycombinator.com if someone is overdoing it.

I might just be that the comments I do read (in relevant contexts or not) stands out for me a lot due to their predictive formula. Is there some way to search comments for regex? Just for my curiosity.

> Is there some way to search comments for regex?

Not publicly that I know of. Might make a good API project.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#258

Post by dang »

L_Rahman wrote: post #247
dang wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem This is a classic perceptual bias. Everyone feels like HN is full of whatever they identify against, because those are the things we notice the most. Since you identify against "the valley ecosystem", HN seems full of uncritical adoration for it. It's a mirror of your own preferences. There's also the enormous home-team adv…

This is fascinating. I want to turn as many of my biases as possible from unknowns to knowns, so I appreciate you pointing this out. An exercise I've now decided to undertake is as follows: Every time I see something that I feel is "uncritical adoration" I will challenge myself to look for evidence for the opposite of that in the same thread. I'll start with HN, but if this works I want to extend that elsewhere.

Well, you made my evening by actually getting that particular point and finding it interesting. That is so rare! And it's such an interesting phenomenon.

I stumbled on this because the moderation job involves reading tons of comments I wouldn't otherwise see, and the various descriptions of HN they contain are quite incompatible. But they all fit the pattern described above.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#259

Post by birracerveza »

Cbeck527 wrote: post #56
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #16

As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than people who actually make things. But I also realize this was because they raised tons of money and was under heavy pressure to get traction at any cost. So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of arti…

I agree- I stopped going back after I realized it was a homogeneous group (read: white dudes connected to VCs) patting each other on the back for releasing half-baked MVPs. I was really turned-off by that. That said, I think it's slowly changing for the better (rigging allegations aside) since I last took a look a year or so ago. I received a small amount of traction after submitting a stupid iMessage sticker pack I…

>white dudes connected to VCs

Stop being racist. What does being white have to do with any of it?

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#260

Post by rl3 »

wwalser wrote: post #100
jonathankoren wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just voting rings on PH though. There's an clique of PH friends that skip the voting completely and go directly to the front page. (See previous HN discussion [0]) PH even admitted that this is the case, and then defended it with the standard Silicon Valley "meritocracy" bullshit that there's just no smarter and better people than my friends and investors, so it's cool. That's just good ol boy bullshit. Afte…

Again I don't disagree. I acknowledge the very likely truth in the claims. I get why it pisses people off. I'm a founder, I want distribution as much as the next person and being bootstrapped I know it's less likely for me than for someone who sold 20% of their company to someone with connections. Those facts just doesn't disqualify PH as a source of interesting things to look at for me. For clarity though I've spend…

>There's also a trait that your account can be tagged with which makes content that you share less likely to get to the front page (all votes on your content count as some percentage of a "real" vote). That attribute is usually added to non-insiders whose content often makes it to the front page.

I've noticed for a while now that I'll only receive a fraction of total points for a submission, perhaps 50-60% of the submission's displayed upvotes.

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