Hackernews-inspired newsletter

Hey guys, I've built a Hackernews-inspired newsletter containing the top 10 articles relevant to founders that were on the HN front-page last week. If you want to get this via email every week, see http://founderweeklys.com/

1. Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think (1022 votes)

There’s a thrill in finding quiet companies, operating in the background, cashing checks. Software has exploded the number of these businesses. Ten people working remotely can make millions of dollars a year.

Austen Allred shared how, when matching Lambda graduates to jobs, he’ll discover software companies he’s never heard of in Oklahoma pocketing $10m/year in profit. Doing things like “making actuarial software for funeral homes.”3

It’s not surprising. Of the 3,000+ software companies acquired over the last three years, only 7% got TechCrunch, Recode, HN, or other mainstream tech coverage.4

Also, markets like SAP, worth $163B. There is a term for these companies, they're called Hidden Champioons, and you can see a few of them on Wikipedia.

Some other useful quotes:

I’ve had four jobs in my life and have always been stunned by what is still done by hand. Every company had a task which could be heavily automated but was instead consuming 4-30 people. So if you think the software market is large, consider all the stuff software never reached.

I applied for a job at a company in my city, and they told me their product was entirely API connectors for the local banks. In fact all of the companies I've worked for here have been making software for local industries! From solar installers, energy efficient lighting manufacturers, local commerce and POS systems, mechanics software, creative market places, local lead generation.

Oh yes, there are tons of giants creating software for health applications you never heard of, defense purposes you cannot hear about, logistic you would never consider (managing competitions, port services, private jet traffic, truck fleets...) and so on. I should know, I make half of my income going from company to company to train their team. They are everywhere. They make billions.

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2. Don’t require a user to be interested twice: lessons on reducing signup friction (390 votes)

Long story short: A guy made a SaaS prototype and he got a few users by posting on forums. Thing is, his "flow" was to get them to "sign up" to the waitlist and then he manually sent them an invite hours or days later.

His success increased when he changed the flow so people get an automatic email to register immediately after they sign up.

Kind of obvious, but there's an important principle here:

Don't require a user to be motivated twice. Instead, make use and ride of the motivation wide when they sign up. This is pretty obvious if you read BJ Fogg material.

Some useful notes from HN comments on users:

Treat signups as a leading indicator of success, not the ultimate goal.

Asking for an email up front is already too much. Let the user use your service, they'll create some "content" or "configuration" in it. Once they do that, they'll want to preserve / persist it, and then you can ask for an email address. They're much more likely to give you a real email address and validate it, because they're already invested.

I'm convinced one of the reasons Zoom is so successful (besides being a great product) is that there is no sign up required at all. Someone invites you to a conference and you just click the link, enter your name and go.

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3. Ask HN: What is the best way to target restaurants and small businesses? (28 votes)

I really like these threads where you have very bright minds giving advice for a common pain point. Here are some amazing answers:

Almost every brick and mortar company’s website includes a phone number. Call 5 of them and order a meal, when you pick it up ask to talk to the manager for a minute. Elevator pitch: you’ve got 5-10 seconds to get them to ask for more time. “When I was ordering food I noticed that I couldn’t prepay online, I almost thought of going somewhere else, how come you don’t have a way to pay before coming in?” “Don’t know how to do that”. “I built a plugin that takes 5-10 mins to set up and people can pay while they order so I don’t have to come inside, can we do a Skype call when you’re not busy to walk through this?”. Once you’ve gotten a handful of trials like this you can start calling but your options with restaurants(especially mom and pop) are to walk in the door or get to them directly on the phone.

or this:

You can also try to target other companies thay already have large restaurant customer bases, but then you become a SKU in their offerings. It may be more about lead genertion than anything else.

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4. OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic (133 votes)

While sites like AirBnb have huge loses, OnlyFans grew 75% during last month. It was launched as a result of platforms like Instagram shutting out adult entertainment workers.

I wonder if there is any way to integrate into this platform as a developer and "ride" on its growth :D

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5. The coming disruption of colleges and universities (82 votes)

Scott Galloway is a man who predicted a lot of things. He predicted Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods a month before it was announced. Last year, he called WeWork on its “seriously loco” $47 billion valuation a month before the company’s IPO imploded.

Now, he predicts something happening with universities. . The post-pandemic future, he says, will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities. MIT@Google. iStanford. HarvardxFacebook. According to Galloway, these partnerships will allow universities to expand enrollment dramatically by offering hybrid online-offline degrees.

How will this disrupt education? Well thousands of brick-and-mortar universties will go out of business.

At the same time, more people than ever will have access to a solid education, albeit one that is delivered mostly over the internet.

If this is true, it may open a lot of opportunities for makers in the edu space.

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6. Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

Here are some recommendation for "brain expanding" books:

"Rework", "Getting Real", the other books by the old 37signals crew, and of course "The Lean Startup" really changed the way I thought about software development and business. I credit them for much of my startup/programming success.

Taleb's Incerto series changed how I thought about investing, risk, and life in general. "Fooled by Randomness" and "Antifragile" are especially good.

"Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy" by Thomas Sowell. I read this as a teenager with only limited exposure to economics and it cleared up many misconceptions I held.

"Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life" by Rory Sutherland. Explains why we choose brands over cheaper alternatives, why we're willing to pay a lot more to lock in a deal, why we hate registering before buying the thing (but are more than happy to do so right after), why Sony removed the record button from the first Walkman, and much more.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. This book makes every bit of life advice you receive afterwards feel shallow. It feels like a reference to western thought.

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7. Scraping Recipe Websites (461 votes)

Do you do scraping as part of your job? Then you may want to read this how this site scrapes 99% of recipe website using a logical template.

An interesting thing they mention is the concept of LCA (lowest common ancestor) and how they use it to identify part of the HTML most likely to contain all of the ingredients/instructions

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8. My blog is now generated by Google Docs (398 votes)

Over and over and over again, I see businesses succeeding just because they tap into people existing habits.

Most people are familiar with typing in Google Docs. If you can make a tool where they just press a button and 'voila', it turns it itno a blog post, they're way more likely to use you vs. someone who creates a separate interface (see BJ Fogg and his behavioral design theory).

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9. US video game sales have record quarter as consumers stay at home (376 votes)

Video game sales are at historic hights. Traffic on gaming-related services like Discord, Twitch, Mixer, and others have hit historic highs

The current crisis probably accelerated video games adoption by 10 years.
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10. Ask HN: How to stop anxiety from too many choices? (286 votes)

The best advice I've seen here is:

Stop shopping start doing.
All these decisions I call shopping, where you do a lot of research but never commit. At some point you have to start working on something.

Have an ideas journal. Write new ideas down there, and don't start with any of them in less than two weeks. This lets you get over the initial enthusiasm - and perhaps new better ideas will push less useful ones out of the way in that time. If something stays at the top of your list for weeks, then perhaps it is useful.

My advice is to lower the value of ideas. A lot of time people think, "If only I had a good idea I would be successful". You will see other people saying things like, "Buy my good idea!". But really, good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good ideas, bad ideas... it actually doesn't make much difference. What makes the difference is execution and timing.

To be successful, really what you need is execution and to have the patience to wait until what you are doing is relevant. Of course there is the fear that it will never be relevant. However, if you accept the thesis that the good idea is not valuable in itself, then you realise that it is not really valuable to pivot without a really good reason. A good idea that is never relevant is just as worthless as a bad idea that is never relevant. However, even a bad idea that is executed very well and ready when the opportunity arises can be successful.

see the first step, the very next step, and that's it. You don't need to know what step 2,748 is about let alone how to solve it to take the next door. (formally: no premature optimization).

Make a decision, and stick to it. In other words, be quick to decide but slow to change. The trick in life is not to "do what you love" (or make the decisions you think are right: spoiler, you'll be wrong 50% of the time). The trick is to "love what you do"

I have similar problems sometimes- and remind myself the power of "good enough". Striving for "the best" will often leave you unsatisfied. So instead of thinking "which is better?" think "is this one good enough?"

If you want to get this via email every week, see http://founderweeklys.com/