Top all-time · #403
Jason Cohen
Personal blog · longform.asmartbear.comstartupsbusinesswriting
Jason Cohen writes A Smart Bear, a personal blog at longform.asmartbear.com about startups, business and writing. Since 2022, 136 different Hacker News readers have linked it 389 times, most often “Exponential Growth”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jason Cohen's essays on SLC (simple, lovable, complete) as a counter to MVPs, and on growth-curve modelling, prioritisation and indie business economics. Commenters cite specific posts as useful reference points.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- One commenter calls the 'good problems to have' post an apt fit for a situation; another says 'really liked' the 'opposite test' post for explaining why certain
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Articles from building two unicorns over two decades; one bootstrapped, one funded.
Most-linked posts?
- Exponential Growth10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-03-05
- Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead (2017)9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2023-09-03
- Excuse me, is there a problem?9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2023-04-16
- Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas (2022)7 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2023-02-16
- The "errors" that mean you're doing it right7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-01-21
- How startups beat incumbents6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-02-25
- The Elephant in the room: The myth of exponential hypergrowth (2022)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-04-08
- Navigating the Unpredictability of Everything6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-03-19
- Selecting the right product metrics (KPIs) (2023)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-07-17
- The Startup Drake Equation6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-02-03
What Hacker News says?
Absolutely love this. Love brands taking the SLC (simple, lovable, complete: https://longform.asmartbear.com/slc/ ) approach - minimalism is an absolute delight in a world where everything is crammed with unnecessary/unused feature bloat. (That said, I'd love a stereo - even if it was just a built in bluetooth speaker/aux-in, which feels like a perfect compromise!)
Comment linking /slc/
on “A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen”Submitted Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy as a story · 489 points
HN discussionNot GP, but perhaps this is the post: https://longform.asmartbear.com/two-big-things/
Comment linking /two-big-things/
on “Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy”Submitted You’re a little company, now act like one (2009) as a story · 299 points
HN discussionI've finally come around to set on a journey to develop my first game. It followed a read on Gamedev in 2025 that actually popped on HN a few months ago[0]. I've mostly scribbled notes on paper for now, trying to be exhaustive about all that before scoping MVP (maybe SLC[1] would be better but I'm first doing that for myself so I'm not really pressuring myself for now). I'm using modern C++, and will probably start…
Comment linking /slc/
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)”Submitted Annual pre-pay and marketing budgets as a story · 138 points
HN discussionAn alternative to one big queue is a separate queue for each client (external customers, internal teams, the dev team's own tech debt, etc) as described in "JIT selection from independent streams: An alternative to the “big backlog” of work": https://longform.asmartbear.com/jit-backlogs/ Each client manages their queue order, so the dev team just needs to focus on the head of each queue. (Of course, the dev team sho…
Comment linking /jit-backlogs/
on “Pivotal Tracker will shut down”Submitted Business advice plagued by survivor bias (2009) as a story · 122 points
HN discussionI think you're abusing the saying "at scale, rare events aren't rare" ( https://longform.asmartbear.com/scale-rare/ etc.) here. It is true that when you are running thousands of machines, events that happen rarely happen often, but that scale usually becomes relevant at thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of things ( https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive... ). That concept is usef…
Comment linking /scale-rare/
on “Speed, scale and reliability: 25 years of Google datacenter networking evolution”Submitted Rare things become common at scale (2014) as a story · 105 points
HN discussionIt usually never is exponential, see e.g. https://longform.asmartbear.com/exponential-growth/ that shows examples from "hypergrowth" companies where it's perceived these companies grew exponentially, but the growth actually followed a more quadratic form. About halfway through the article, the author shows another model that's more likely to fit these growth patterns: logistic growth. After initial rapid growth, fol…
Comment linking /exponential-growth/
on “Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations”Submitted Color Wheels Are Wrong (2011) as a story · 95 points
HN discussionThese are all people running AI labs! They want investment, and what better way to get investment than to tell people you're going to create Terminator? The people leaving OpenAI are joining other labs – their livelihoods depend on AI companies receiving investment: "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it". > The models keep getting better at an expo…
Comment linking /exponential-growth/
on “Three Observations”Submitted AI startups require new strategies: This time it's different as a story · 94 points
HN discussionhttps://longform.asmartbear.com/logo/
Comment linking /logo/
on “AI startups require new strategies: This time it's different”Submitted The unfortunate math behind consulting companies (2011) as a story · 93 points
HN discussionPage does not display for me in Firefox. Use the PDF link at the top. https://longform.asmartbear.com/consulting-company-accountin...
Comment linking /consulting-company-accounting/consulting-company-accounting.pdf
on “The unfortunate math behind consulting companies (2011)”Submitted Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead (2017) as a story · 61 points
HN discussionThis article hits close to home for me! Coincidentally, I also started making apps in high school using REALbasic, before moving on to my first "real" language Perl, and am also working on launching a new app now [1]. On the article's point of "don't underdevelop," for launch I ended up trying to follow the SLC philosophy [2], a cousin of MVP. I managed to stick to the "S" with mixed success :-). My own two cents fo…
Comment linking /slc/
on “A few words about indie app business”Submitted Product Purgatory: When they love it but still don't buy as a story · 40 points
HN discussionWhile reading the article, I was bothered by the tone-deaf MBA speak, which reminded me of two alternative perspectives to the OKR article. https://longform.asmartbear.com/survivor-bias https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/leadership-is-a-hell-of-a-dr...
Comment linking /survivor-bias
on “Improving OKRs”Submitted "Authentic" is dead. And so is "is dead." as a story · 35 points
HN discussionDid they ever explain the logo thing? https://longform.asmartbear.com/logo/
Comment linking /logo/
on “Uber is closing alcohol delivery service Drizly three years after acquistion”Submitted Why targeting an ICP brings 10x more customers than you expected as a story · 29 points
HN discussionApril Dunford has two great books. Positioning comes first, then sales. As a small outfit, you probably don't want to actually sell. The approach that worked for me was to focus on inbound marketing and let customers self-select and come to you. Have a great pitch, ideally right there on your web site. Then get them onto a trial, treat them as customer from day one and get them into your customer success programme.…
Comment linking /problem/
on “Ask HN: Books about sales for indie hackers and small SaaS businesses”Submitted Excuse me, is there a problem? as a story · 17 points
HN discussionWhat stands out to me is the duration of time and the disproportionately low appearing capitalization of the $10m - how did only $3m end up spent? You'll need to analyze this. But really, if you have no revenue, and no passion - be open with your cofounder. Dwindling along until you use all $10m isn't fair to anybody involved really. You must both know this; who decided, and was it on purpose? And if investors want…
Comment linking /swot/
on “Ask HN: Should I stay at my default dead startup or go and do something else?”Submitted Startup Exercise: What can't be solved with money? (2011) as a story · 15 points
HN discussionReally liked one of the linked articles https://longform.asmartbear.com/opposite-test/ which grounds better for me why these phrases are supposed to be dead.
Comment linking /opposite-test/
on “"Authentic" is dead. And so is "is dead."”Submitted Product/Market Fit (PMF): Experience and Data as a story · 15 points
HN discussion
