TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 29, 2013, 8:45 PM UTC

dmor wrote: post #29

paulitex wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about the confusion. When I say I will pay $60 for a warm lead, that's assuming a number of them will not convert. Our LTV is in the 1000s, but another part of the cost of acquisition is the time on the phone to close the deal. It's more like this: - We'll pay $300 bucks for 5 warm leads to hand off to sales. - Sales will work the leads to close, spending another $200 of time. One of them will close. - We'll ge…

I figured your LTV was probably much higher given what you're doing. That 4x CAC thing is really intended for consumer companies I think. The reason this methodology matters is that when you have a marketer trying to figure out how to deploy a substantial amount of capital against business goals they've got to break it down by channel. And this common misconception is one of the most painful hurdles to get over with…

Post by lttlrck » Tue, Jan 29, 2013, 9:22 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #32

philwelch wrote: post #23

What front page do your customers read? Unless all you're doing is selling to Silicon Valley, neither TechCrunch nor Hacker News are necessarily going to be the answer.

I've gotten LiberWriter on the front page here a few times, and the number of new customers was astounding: Absolutely zero. The typical LW customer is not at all tech-savvy, which is pretty much the polar opposite of your average HN user. I get far more mileage out of hitting forums where writers actually congregate. Not to complain, mind you, I posted to talk about aspects of LiberWriter that I found interesting th…

Post by chewxy » Tue, Jan 29, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #23

What front page do your customers read? Unless all you're doing is selling to Silicon Valley, neither TechCrunch nor Hacker News are necessarily going to be the answer.

Post by paulitex » Tue, Jan 29, 2013, 11:22 PM UTC

robodale wrote: post #36

Neither. Build up a mailing list of prospects while you build and keep them updated on your progress. On launch day, spread the news among the mailing list.

Post by nickfrost » Wed, Jan 30, 2013, 1:12 AM UTC

paulitex wrote: post #37

robodale wrote: post #36

Neither. Build up a mailing list of prospects while you build and keep them updated on your progress. On launch day, spread the news among the mailing list.

Worth noting, we actually did that as well. I believe we got 7-8 conversions on launch day from the ML. Built from ~6 months of email capture on the landing page + 4 months of active customer discovery interviews.