24 hours on Hacker News front page
by HenriNextJacquesm pulled a Paul Graham Classic on me...
I was on Hacker News, replying to Jacquesm (the 2nd highest karma user of HN) few levels deep in some random thread.
After writing couple of more comments, I went back to Hacker News front page, and of course in the meantime Jacquesm had posted "BugJail - a completely new way of debugging" without telling me, pointing to our half-finished landing page :)
Same classic practical joke how Paul Graham launched Reddit on Hacker News without telling in advance..
Stayed ~24 hours on front page with 258 points, got 5 figure unique visitors and hundreds of new beta testers, plus dozen interesting media, investor and collaboration contacts so could have been worse day, but wasn't particularly relaxing.
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Congrats! Even though it wasn't "ready", I'm sure the feeling you had that day was amazing. Wish you much success!
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Not "even though it wasn't ready", but "because of it wasn't ready"...
I think the main point of Paul Graham Classic (publishing really rough-edged product without telling in advance) is to destroy the founder's fear.
When you simultaneously realize that you didn't die because people saw your embarrassingly imperfect product, and that they really wanted to use your product anyway, it removes all future fear of getting out there and showing people what you've built.
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Agreed. When you've spent countless hours on something, fear gets the best of us. Perfecting mode sets in to compensate, which causes folks to work on something way longer than they should.
I think the rough-edged launch just shows that your product is likely going to be a hit. "Perfecting" will certainly give you higher conversion rates, so whatever traction you got from so far will only get better if you lean in.
Good luck! I'll be rooting for you 😀
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That's really awesome Henri! Pretty sure Jacquesm wouldn't have posted it if he didn't see the potential in BugJail!
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Thanks. Check your email.
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@HenriNext Congrats and all the best!
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This is a really cool project. Wish I could have had it back when I was doing Java. 👏
What is your planned business model?
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BugJail is coming for different programming languages gradually; the core was designed from day 0 for multi-language use, including seamlessly across languages and processes.
The planned business model is fairly original: I sell licenses :)
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Man you're lucky. I would be over the moon if I got even half that much exposure for Snap Search ( http://snapsearch.online )
All the best 🙂
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Congrats! Sounds like it was great exposure.
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Awesome! Congratulations 🎉
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That's good stuff. I like the idea of BugJail.
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Nice, sometimes you need a nice bit of luck like that. Good luck with your product
