Top all-time · #987
Andrew Chen
Personal blog · andrewchenblog.comstartupsbusiness
Andrew Chen writes andrewchen, a personal blog at andrewchenblog.com about startups and business. Since 2008, 70 different Hacker News readers have linked it 128 times, most often “Stanford CS major seeks sales/marketing monkey”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-12-16
- Stanford CS major seeks sales/marketing monkey3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-02-05
- Product design debt versus technical debt3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-11-25
- Growth Hacker is the New VP Marketing - Andrew Chen3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-04-27
- How to create a profitable Freemium startup (spreadsheet model included)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-01-19
- Minimum Desirable Product2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-12-07
- Minimum Viable Product vs. Minimum Desirable Product2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-04-09
- Do interviews predict job performance? How about dating for marriage?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-07-28
- How to measure if users love your product using cohorts and revisit rates2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-09-08
- Laws of Shitty Click-throughs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-04-07
What Hacker News says?
New York, NY - Craft Coffee - Lead Rails Engineer Full-time http://craftcoffee.com/jobs We're looking for a kickass full-stack Rails developer. TECHNICAL CHALLENGE It's not a shopping cart. We want to build a best-in-class integration of marketing and technology. This is the new golden skill set. You'll master it at Craft Coffee, and engage in very hard problems on the leading edge of online commerce. See, for examp…
Comment linking /2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/
on “Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (May 2012)”Submitted Why you’ll always think your product is shit as a story · 203 points
HN discussionViral growth actually can be explained with a formula for the viral factor (aka viral coefficient or k-factor). You can see the basic formula for Send Hotness's viral factor here: http://www.slideshare.net/StanFan/send-hotness-stanford-face... . When your viral factor is above 1.0, you will see exponential growth. In the case of Send Hotness, our viral factor was approximately 1.4, which allowed us to grow to 5 mill…
Comment linking /2008/03/05/facebook-viral-marketing-when-and-why-do-apps-jump-the-shark/
on “The Class that built Apps, and Fortunes”Submitted How to create a profitable Freemium startup (spreadsheet model included) as a story · 80 points
HN discussionIncidentally, another HackerNews link is exactly what I'm referring to.... http://andrewchenblog.com/2011/02/05/stanford-cs-major-seeks...
Comment linking /2011/02/05/stanford-cs-major-seeks-salesmarketing-monkey/
on “The Knack for Getting Money”Submitted Don’t compete on features as a story · 76 points
HN discussionhttp://andrewchenblog.com/2007/11/22/why-bloggers-and-press-... Interesting contrarian viewpoint. I don't agree with it entirely (the truth always lies somewhere in the middle) but the important takeaway is that active promotion is expensive as hell (either time or money). I'd say the most important thing is to BE WORTH TALKING ABOUT. If you're yet another project management app or bugtracker, this is challenging. H…
Comment linking /2007/11/22/why-bloggers-and-press-dont-matter-for-user-acquisition/
on “Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application?”Submitted Stanford CS major seeks sales/marketing monkey as a story · 75 points
HN discussionThe interview process in this case worked fine. But it's silly and probably causes them to miss a LOT of good candidates. It's measuring a subjects ability to think critically... quickly and while under a lot of pressure. Is SPEED of critical thinking important? How many positions at Google require people to think on their feet? How many positions require them to be comfortable/effective talking to strangers on the…
Comment linking /2009/07/28/what-if-interviews-poorly-predict-job-performance-what-if-dating-poorly-predicts-marital-happiness/
on “My Nightmare Interviews With Google ”Submitted Built to Fail: What Google, Ideo, and 37signals have in common as a story · 71 points
HN discussion[2] Andrew Chen's blog: http://andrewchenblog.com/
Comment linking /
on “Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 14 Notes Essay”Submitted How many users do you need for a 100MM / year consumer Internet product? as a story · 58 points
HN discussionYou're right, these are pretty obvious and appealing to a mass audience is much harder than just marketing to the tech crowd. I'd suggest checking out Andrew Chen's blog: http://andrewchenblog.com/ This guy is THE guy to read when it comes to user acquisition.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Launching?”Submitted Visual Basic, PHP, Rails. Is Node.js next? as a story · 56 points
HN discussionI think things like options and any other legal is a very delicate stuffs and better be done with experts (lawyer, accountant etc). For resources, here are few that i have in the arsenal: Marketing: http://startup-marketing.com/ http://andrewchenblog.com/ Legal: http://www.thestartuplawyer.com/ General: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/ http://onstartups.com/ You can ask any topic: http://discuss.joelonsoft…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Good books on the nuts and bolts of starting up”Submitted Andrew Chen's 2011 Blogging Roadmap: “Zero to product/market fit” as a story · 56 points
HN discussionGreat question. It does seem that the tech-world lags behind in terms of the role of the designer, when compared with that of Industrial Design for example. Take IDEO. An Industrial Design consultancy at heart who over the last 10 years have evolved into a consultancy that focus's more broadly on innovation, design thinking, strategy and designing businesses. Whereas once upon a time an Industrial Designer's job wou…
Comment linking /2009/12/04/does-every-startup-need-a-steve-jobs/
on “Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer”Submitted Growth Hacker is the New VP Marketing - Andrew Chen as a story · 53 points
HN discussionHere's Andrew Chen when you need him! http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/01/19/how-to-create-a-profita... Great post. And thanks for all the other links guys, very useful resources. The SXSW Web App Autopsy deck is very interesting.
Comment linking /2009/01/19/how-to-create-a-profitable-freemium-startup-spreadsheet-model-included/
on “Ask HN: Stats on freemium services”Submitted Does Silicon Valley noise detract from long-term value creation? as a story · 46 points
HN discussionFWIW, I wrote that same feature for Wishpot (price alerts) including the infrastructure for scraping thousands of stores that don't have APIs. It's a pretty interesting problem, but to be honest I never could see it as a product in and of itself. A lot of people have tried. Some spun it as a way to track things you've already bought in case you might be able to get a refund/rebate when the price dropped, which was a…
Comment linking /2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/
on “The depressing reality of your startup failing”Submitted The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs as a story · 45 points
HN discussionhttp://andrewchenblog.com/2007/09/26/5-things-that-make-your...
Comment linking /2007/09/26/5-things-that-make-your-social-network-monetize-like-crap/
on “Ask HN: Why is it so hard for social media/networking sites to monetize their users?”Submitted Does anyone care about your new product? as a story · 41 points
HN discussioncasual games mostly.. peggle, world of goo, etc. if hacker news is content, then basecamp & fixx probably also count (team & product news, respectively). apart from that, i would pay for some TED talks, for high quality game reviews ( http://tinyurl.com/cn5guu ), and for most of Andrew Chen's blog ( http://andrewchenblog.com/ ).
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What content do you pay for online?”Submitted Stop asking “But how will they make money?” as a story · 39 points
HN discussionIf you're a technical founder, with some interest and understanding on how to create some buzz around your app and get in users - I'd say, you don't really need a business / non-technical founder early on. Though, at some stage when you start scaling up, you will need someone (could be technical or non-technical) who can help on the business side. Andrew Chen's recent post has some good points on this - http://andre…
Comment linking /2011/02/05/stanford-cs-major-seeks-salesmarketing-monkey/
on “Ask HN: What to look for in a NON-technical cofounder”Submitted Free to Freemium: Lessons learned from YouSendIt.com as a story · 39 points
HN discussionActual article here: http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/11/25/product-design-debt-ver... Real reason websites look so ugly, not mentioned in article: browsers don't use good typesetting algorithms in order to keep reflow speeds high. (Compare TeX to a Word document or a browser page rendering. Yech.)
Comment linking /2009/11/25/product-design-debt-versus-technical-debt/
on “Why websites look so ugly”Submitted Do interviews predict job performance? How about dating for marriage? as a story · 35 points
HN discussion
