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growthperclickHacker Playbooks.

Launch

Show HN / Reddit where the nerds already are

Put the work in front of a skeptical, technical room. Hacker News, specialized subreddits, and niche Discords punish hype and reward a working demo.

Early adopters from these rooms write the first tutorials, file the first bugs, and become the citation you need for everyone else.

How to run it

  1. 01Read a week of the room so you do not sound like a press release.
  2. 02Title with the artifact: 'Show HN: X — does Y without Z'.
  3. 03Ship something they can break in the thread.
  4. 04Stay in the comments until the thread dies. The comments are the landing page.

In the wild

A generation of indie tools still traces first traction to a Show HN or a well-timed subreddit post. Patio11's writing culture is the long form of the same move.

Used by · 3

Pieter Levels

@levelsio

Itch-first · SEO + X

Profitable solo products, shipped in public, SEO + Twitter as the company

Patrick McKenzie

@patio11

SEO + copy · charge more

SEO, copy, and charging more — the Kalzumeus school of software marketing

Sahil Lavingia

@shl

Creator rails · simplicity

Building in public, simplicity as positioning, creators as the niche