Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AngelList acquires Product Hunt

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 280 posts

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#261

Post by alexjv89 »

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…

stop following a lot of people and twitter will be substantially better.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#262

Post by jyriand »

birracerveza wrote: post #259
Cbeck527 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't think every statement that mentions 'white' or 'black' should be considered racist.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#263

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #256
brazzledazzle wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#264

Post by alexjv89 »

Keats wrote: post #212
aartur wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I submitted my startup two days ago by myself, as someone who didn't have any PH "karma", but I somehow was granted permissions for submitting products (probably because I was subscribed to a newsletter for a long time). I asked by email if it's ok if I submit my startup by myself. I was told it's ok and wished good luck. On the launch day my site received literally five visits (in the first hours, probably a few mor…

As a counter-example, someone posted our product on PH and we only noticed when we saw a spike in signups and had a look at where they were coming from. It ended up being #1 that day and still is the main source of signups. I don't have a PH account myself though and never go to that website, it was pretty bad in terms of design/UX.

The same happened here. One of the mods found our product and put it on PH. We just had a signup button, but there was no activity that a signed in user could do. People still signed up. Who posts your product on PH matters, I think. If we had posted it ourself it would have looked pretty sad.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#265

Post by alexjv89 »

cyberferret wrote: post #220
Jasber wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I agree excessive self-promotion can be bad for a platform. In this case I included a link because I think it strengthens the argument. Product Hunt was built to help people like me—and it did. Here's the proof! And I think my post confirms what you're saying—I was able to use Product Hunt as a tool to help reach my goal. I know this isn't always the case, which is why I wanted to give my experience.

Also don't mean to be a downer or salty, but you might as well have said "The lotto system was built to make people like me wealthy". Until it is a platform that offers universal opportunity to everybody who builds something, then it is really no more than a pot luck draw that is too reliant on timing, marketing shine, and debasing yourself in front of 'influencers' in the hope that they will give you their royal ble…

Thats weird, we build something. Someone posted it, and we were made makers pretty quickly.. I guess every time a system fails, it does turn a couple of people away. I would had similar feeling if we were not made makers immediately.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#266

Post by birracerveza »

jyriand wrote: post #262
birracerveza wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>white dudes connected to VCs Stop being racist. What does being white have to do with any of it?

I don't think every statement that mentions 'white' or 'black' should be considered racist.

It should be considered racist in the context of the post. Why bring it up at all? He is explaining the reason that he stopped going, and bringing race into the mix. That is racism.

As he himself stated, the real problem is the circlejerking nature of the community, and that would be the same were it a homogeneous group of white, black, green people or even a heterogeneous one.

Sorry for the rant, especially since telemele explained this better than me, but it seriously irked me.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#267

Post by DonHopkins »

jyriand wrote: post #262
birracerveza wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>white dudes connected to VCs Stop being racist. What does being white have to do with any of it?

I don't think every statement that mentions 'white' or 'black' should be considered racist.

I totally agree with you, but in birracerveza's dead comment he strongly disagrees without offering any explanation: "He is explaining the reason that he stopped going, and bringing race into the mix. That is racism."

No, that is not racism, but "many people" think that way because they have been wrongly taught to believe that any mention of race is racism, which is incorrect.

And birracerveza is one of those "many people" who really need to educate themselves by reading up on the topic of racism, starting with "Mentioning Race Doesn't Make You a Racist [1]", and continuing on to wikipedia [2] to learn what racism really is.

Hint: Ask yourself if Cbeck527 systematically oppressed anyone by "stopping going" or "bringing race into the mix"?

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201001/mention...

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

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#268

Post by pc86 »

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…

> So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of artificially trying to grow

Well, I've never heard the term "growth hacker" used unironically outside of startups (honestly even SV specifically) so I don't think that's likely.

And AngelList needs to recoup their millions somehow. How often is a product acquired and all the investment-round cruft and garbage suddenly disappeared? Doesn't it usually just get worse?

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#269

Post by pc86 »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #191
bbaumgar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point to some examples where this has worked? It seems that the entry fee would either 1. limit the community's growth severely (not necessarily a bad thing), or 2. filter out good candidates.

TED and ACM https://www.ted.com/ http://www.acm.org/

ACM is a professional association, and I wouldn't consider TED a community.

Neither of these is anything close to a subreddit or forum which is the "community" to which the thread is generally referring.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#270

Post by zerognowl »

minimaxir wrote: post #5

It's common knowledge that Product Hunt is rigged, and they will not heavily punish startups for soliciting upvotes (blatant example: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 ) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated with a submitted startup (and often…

Every site which uses the Reddit upvoting model is subject to this type of attack. The correct name for it is a Sybil Attack[1]

I suspect a large portion of Reddit accounts are sockpuppet[2] accounts, alongside Product Hunt.

It's the Law of Manipulatable Numbers where if you put a number next to somebody's name online, then the person sometimes (not often) tries to manipulate the number.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)

Also noteworthy:

http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-clinton-debate-online-p...

Post reply on HN