Top all-time · #3950
Austen Allred
Personal blog · austenallred.comstartupsbusiness
Austen Allred's personal blog at austenallred.com covers startups and business. Since 2012, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 66 times, most often “The Hacker's Guide to User Acquisition”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
The official website of Austen Allred - I post most everything here (if it's more permanent than Twitter)
Most-linked posts?
- The Hacker's Guide to User Acquisition3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-12-24
- Exploiting Instagram to help a friend sell $4,000 of neckties in one day3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-02
- The Hacker’s Guide to Getting Press3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-02-06
- The hacker's guide to acquiring the first 1,000 users: Twitter2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-10-02
- /voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-valley/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-04-19
- Reading Collection by Austen Allred2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-07
- I'm done with HackerNews2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-04-03
What Hacker News says?
You nailed it. I lived in a Honda Civic this summer as I was getting a startup off the ground ( http://www.austenallred.com/founders-never-say-die/ ), and I had a half dozen people offer to let me stay at their place or crash on their couch rent-free. I was certainly grateful for their hospitality, however self-sufficiency, even if it comes to the extent of living in a car and scalping soccer tickets for a living, f…
Comment linking /founders-never-say-die/
on “What It's Like to Fail”Submitted The Hacker’s Guide to Getting Press as a story · 50 points
HN discussionI'm surprised Allred is back to HN[1] but I guess it's mostly to serve the ends of Glasswire. [1] http://austenallred.com/im-done-with-hacker-news/
Comment linking /im-done-with-hacker-news/
on “YouTube Red, a $9.99 Site-Wide Ad-Free Subscription with Play Music”Submitted The hacker's guide to acquiring the first 1,000 users: Twitter as a story · 44 points
HN discussionThis is exactly why I've been writing "The Hacker's Guide to User Acquisition" (first chapter: http://www.austenallred.com/the-hackers-guide-to-the-first-1... , next chapter will be about getting press). I would point out a few things. 1. The notion that you "build a better mousetrap" and people will beat their way to your door is true maybe 1% of the time. Many more companies have had to fight a little to become su…
Comment linking /the-hackers-guide-to-the-first-1000-users-twitter/
on “Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing”Submitted I'm done with HackerNews as a story · 21 points
HN discussionhttps://youtu.be/FF-tKLISfPE Transcription at: https://austenallred.com/steve-jobs-insult-response-transcri... > The hardest thing is, how does that fit into a cohesive larger vision that’s gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars — 10 billion dollars of product a year? One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start…
Comment linking /steve-jobs-insult-response-transcription-be6df9dd692c
on “A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)”Submitted Rules of Growth as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI have this strange sense of aversion to Periscope, even though I know it's not logical. It feels to me like Meerkat was a cool thing built by a bunch of my friends that took off, and then the big blood-sucking corporation (Twitter) tried to rip it off and make some money (even though that's not accurate). That probably stems from this conversation between Ben (the co-founder of Meerkat), and someone who was buildin…
Comment linking /assets/ph-ben.png
on “Periscope by Twitter”Submitted Valuations Mean Nothing Anymore as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI put together a (free) guide on how to find hundreds of emails for press contacts within your specific niche (or those of people writing about your competitors) and how to contact them (which is even more important). I can get a list of 200 or so reporters who would be very interested in hearing about my product (and often have written about competitors), and send them (personalized) emails in a few hours. I usuall…
Comment linking /user-acquisition/book/chapter/press/
on “Submit.co – Where to get press coverage for your startup”Submitted The Sad State of Fact-Checking as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe concept of a livestream isn't new at all, but there are a thousand subtle things that are slightly different ( http://austenallred.com/_site/the-subtle-things/ ). The way they're tied into Twitter and riding an already-existing social graph, the widespread adoption of mobile, the availability of bandwidth and the acceptance of ephemerality are all completely different than Justin.tv or the many other attempts in…
Comment linking /_site/the-subtle-things/
on “Meerkat is dying”Submitted Founders Never Say Die as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe purpose of our salaries is to keep us alive while we build a great company; what arbitrary number of dollars is required to do that isn't important to me. We have an equal number of shares, because he's an equal partner. If I take an extra 20k of salary, that's 20k less we can use to hire someone better/smarter. I'd much rather work with smarter people than drive a nicer car. I don't really care for "stuff" anyw…
Comment linking /everything-you-need/
on “How much should I raise in my angel round? How should I spend it?”Submitted Successful Entrepreneurs are Usually Liars (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSo far one week in Silicon Valley, but I honestly feel it's sustainable. Park your car and sleep in it wherever there are other cars (no one notices you), work in the Hacker Dojo, shower at the Gold's Gym down the street in Mountain View. Total burn rate per month? $200-ish. http://www.austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-...
Comment linking /voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-valley/
on “The Day our investors came to see the office (2011)”Submitted You are not the target user as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI wrote something similar to this, but more for the layman. Kind of a step-by-step guide to Twitter user acquisition. http://www.austenallred.com/the-hackers-guide-to-the-first-1... Before we launched were were getting about 50 signups/day from Twitter at our landing page - around 150 visits.
Comment linking /the-hackers-guide-to-the-first-1000-users-twitter/
on “How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup”Submitted Turn The Wi-Fi Off as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMost of these comments are trying to determine why people are homeless, citing some anecdote of some person the poster met once. It bothers me that we are trying to determine why people are homeless so that next time we see a homeless person we can know why. That's simply not possible. I was (voluntarily) homeless in San Francisco for a while ( http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-vall... ), only…
Comment linking /voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-valley/
on “Homeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture”Submitted Exploiting Instagram to help a friend sell $4,000 of neckties in one day as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI lived in my car under similar-ish circumstances. Was getting a company off the ground, needed to be in Silicon Valley to raise money, was unwilling to pay $800/month for a single terrible bedroom, and had read a lot of Thoreau and already given away almost everything I owned to vagabond around China. It's kind of a pain living on $200-300 a month, but it's really not that bad. You start to realize that most of the…
Comment linking /voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-valley/
on “I secretly lived in my office for 500 days”Submitted Can we all agree the news is sufficiently broken? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI also wrote a guide to PR for startups, that's more "DIY for free" than about hiring an agency. I've never had any trouble getting plenty of write-ups (from a couple dozen major blogs/sites for average products to the cover of Time Magazine for another). I used to sell the book, but it's online for free http://austenallred.com/user-acquisition/book/chapter/press/
Comment linking /user-acquisition/book/chapter/press/
on “A Guide to PR for Startups”Submitted Why it's so much harder to get your first job as a junior engineer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt's not really "hacking" - it's just marketing. Occasionally you may beat use a trick to beat a system, but mostly it's a bullshit buzzword that marketers came up with. Unfortunately, it works really, really well. I wrote a (free) book[1] on user acquisition, following the pattern of a lot of the programming tutorials that helped me learn to program. I originally called it "The Hacker's Guide to User Acquisition."…
Comment linking /user-acquisition/book/
on “A Developer’s Guide to Growth Hacking”Submitted Howard Marks Memos [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOh wow, didn't expect to see this on the front page. If you enjoyed this I have a bit more content on user acquisition that is a similar actionable, step-by-step style. SEO: https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step-by-s... Instagram: https://austenallred.com/the-growth-hackers-guide-to-instagr... Pinterest: https://austenallred.com/how-to-growth-hack-pinterest-699d29...
Comment linking /how-to-growth-hack-pinterest-699d295909b1
on “How to get press for a startup (2015)”Submitted The Advent of the Upvote as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
