I've made a HackerNews-inspired newsletter. Sharing it here (Top 10 Posts From Past Week)

Hackernews is one of the last places on the internet where people discuss constructively about various (mostly tech-related) topics. Programming, design...and business.

I'm trying to collect the "business" part (which contains incredible value) and curate the top 10 posts from past week. They're below. Some of the things include:

How one guy increased his sales sales by 600x
What type of content to produce in order to get your ROI?
3 ideas that changes peoples lives and are relevant to founders
etc...

If you found it useful, I'd really appreciate an upvote. Took me a few hours to make this. Without further do:

First, it was Craigslist, next it's Zapier (438 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126455

Take every major category on Craigslist. There was a major startup build for each of it. Jobs = Indeed, temporary housing = AirBnB, tickets = StubHub.

The author here argues the same will happen with Zapier. His conclusion:

So my advice if you're looking for your next indie software idea. Just observe what these no-coders are automating on Zapier and build a nice UI around it.

In the HN comment section, there are some other nice examples:

One of my favorite business model suggestions for entrepreneurs is, find an old UNIX command that hasn't yet been implemented on the web, and fix that. talk and finger became ICQ, LISTSERV became Yahoo! Groups, ls became (the original) Yahoo!, find and grep became Google, rn became Bloglines, pine became Gmail, mount is becoming S3, and bash is becoming Yahoo! Pipes.

An alternate business model is to look at Yahoo product launches from 5-10 years ago, and build what they did but shut down, its time may have come. Google did this pretty well for a while. You can probably do it for Google now, too.

This applies to Reddit too to some extent: AskReddit => Quora, MillionaireMakers => PoolTogether, Deals/Free/DiscountedProducts => SlickDeals, HotUKDeals, SideProject => Product Hunt, BuyForLife => goodcheapandfast.com

2. I gave away my books and sales increased (414 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073126

By "increased", he means 60x, from 541 copies per month prior to March, to 32,450. Why? Few theories (mentioned by people in the HackerNews comment):

Increased awareness and visibility
People are nowadays more into 'shopping online' mode than ever
The pricing of the book is way less than most technical books ($15 vs $50)
A 2017 EU study showed piracy doesn't hurt game sales, it actually helps

"For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy." - Tim O'Reilly

Did you know that Paulo Coelho used to pirate his books ON PURPOSE? Sales was 0 in the beginning, then 10k, next year 100k, next year 1m.

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3. How Stripe Designs Websites (432 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23079289

Stripe makes their designs elegant by:

Focusing on Typography. They use an elegant font called Camphor.
User experience. They indicate a visual response when you hover over buttons and links.
Use the .svg format for images (instead of .jpg and .png)

One HN commenter makes a pretty important distinction between marketing/actual app sites:

"Marketing websites should be flashy to draw people in. But, when the rubber hits the road, I want functionality, power, and performanc."

Copywriting is pretty important too. Most landing pages fall flat because they weren't written with a skeptical and impatient stranger in mind.

4. Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life (1031 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23092657

Some interesting ideas relevant to founders:

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil". Failure to validate a product before building it? Premature optimization. This advice comes in different forms: "Progress over perfection", "Iteration quickly", "Move fast and break things", "Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough", etc. but I find the umbrella statement of not prematurely optimizing to encompass them all.
My opinions are not mine and they are holding me back.
Give multiple and opposing views equal respect and disdain at the same time. Treating a thought as your own, as an opinion "you hold" greatly holds you back from a great deal of valuable perspective. Of course you surely hold some world-view and gauge things from that position but try to cultivate more of these positions as if you were someone else.
Don't get your sense of self so wrapped up in all the thoughts and ideas that flit about in your brain. You will surely be a different person in 1, 5, 10, 20 years and may well have a completely different perspective then.
Assume positive intent. Your parent is not your enemy. Your teacher is not your enemy. Your boss is not your enemy. The other team at work is not your enemy. The corporation is not your enemy. The other political party is not your enemy. Or, more accurately, YOU are not THEIR enemy. At best, you're an NPC in their game. Many of them probably even want to help you, because you are another person in the world, and that feels good.

5. Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting (236 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23067127

The authors analyzed over 500 pitches to see what factors get you a VC meeting. These were strongly correlated:

The Problem & Market Segment
How does your product make money?

According to some people in the HN comment section, the authors probably forgot:

A strong network. Having strong introductions.
Making sure you ALREADY have customers vs. just coming up with an idea

6. The Content Marketing Handbook (123 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23082612

The gist of this handbook is that you should write about information your company has access to.

There may be more “shareable” content out there -- cute animal pictures, snarky commentary, celebrity gossip, and the like -- but that stuff won’t get you customers.

Information, on the other hand, will. It can be data that your company produces, insights you have because of your industry experience, or stories about the people you have access to.

A great example is OkCupid and their articles you've probably encountered.

This is just one key point from the handbook. Highly recommend you read it.

7. I was tricked into thinking I had “grit” (366 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23088219

Does 'grit' exists? Or you were just having "grit" in the areas you enjoyed doing?

One HN commenter has great advice on how to 'stick' with something:

It is impossible to be really good at everything.... when I optimized for work, my fitness goals went through the window. When I optimized to get a project done, my reading (books) went down as well.
When I optimized for fitness (working out and soccer), my work and side projects started progressing slower. It is very hard to work on your project at home, when you are in a intense bulking, or 'cutting' phase, and once you come home form the gym you just want to chill....

When I say 'optimize for', I mean that particular facet of your life becomes the more important one, and you spend more energy. Often you have to make choices: eg. social life, or project you are working on?

The only key I found is to be good/focus your energy in one area at a time, while just being happy with being 'good enough' at other areas. Once you reach a desired in one area, you can switch your focus to other ones. *eg: once you reached a desirable physical shape, you can switch to 'maintain mode', and focus your energies to something new (e.g. learning a new tech, or starting a project). As gym rats say: 'Maintaining' is always easier than "Gaining, or Cutting".

It is just physically impossible to optimize on everything in your life, no matter how ambitious you are, or how much 'grit' you have.

(eg. you can't start a ambitious project, while having a great social life, and bulking up in the gym, while playing soccer regularly multiple times a week, and having a full time job, at the same time).

8. The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret (397 votes)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23104875

Don't let the title fool you. This is an article about pricing. Or to be exact, changing your pricnig from free to charging even a $1.

The article describes such an example of how US soldiers were provided free doughnuts. Suddenly, someone started putting a price tag on the doughnuts. This changed the relationship significantly.

Some HN commenters have interesting anecdotal examples of how something sold immediately once they started charging for it:

One guy was trying to get rid of his couch. He listed it as a freebie on Craigslist. Nobody bought it. He then put a price tag of $20. Gone the next day.
A comic book store had interesting marketing material with cool artwork. They tried to give it away. Nobody touched it. Then they put a $5 price tag on it. They were sold out within a week.

On the other hand, you don't want to put a price tag on friendship:

If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer.
If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equivalent price of a few slices of pizza and a beer, the category has changed from showing appreciation to placing an actual value on my time, at which point working all day for $21.58 stops making sense.

Also, be careful when introducing 'fines'. A child care center started fining people who picked up their children late. The result was counter-productive: https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what-they-do/

9. Could a randomness machine help you fight procrastination?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23132069

We, people, are excited by randomness and unpredictability. We get excited by unpredictability. Watching sports - who will score/win? Fishing - will I get a catch? Reading news - what has happened (in the last hour)? Listening to radio - what song will they play next? Going to a bar - who will I meet? Shopping - is there a bargain on the sale?

What if you could use this fact to your advantage? What if, when exercising, you pick up the type of exercise you'll do from a jar? Or which project aspect you'll be working on in the next hour?

10. Why are some people better at working from home than others?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23109853

This article from BBC tackles a very relevant issue for entrepreneurs. It turns out, frustration tolerance has a lot to do with it:

“If you’re easily getting frustrated, then you’re going to run away from [work] and use avoidance as a coping mechanism, which will shoot you in the foot,” says Pychyl.

You can take steps to raise your frustration tolerance and become more conscientious by working on your impulsivity. Simple things like taking a five deep breathings are described in the article.

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If you want to get insights like these each month, feel free to subscribe to my weekly newsletter: https://founderweeklys.com/