Top all-time · #1142
Noah Kagan
Personal blog · okdork.comstartupsbusiness
Noah Kagan's personal blog at okdork.com covers startups and business. Since 2007, 61 different Hacker News readers have linked it 98 times, most often “How Mint Beat Wesabe”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Noah Kagan's blog on startup marketing and growth, linked for cold email, blog traffic, landing pages, hiring, and podcast interviews with founders and operators.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Founder of AppSumo and author of Million Dollar Weekend. Free weekly newsletter with one business tactic you can use today. All tactics. No fluff.
Most-linked posts?
- How Mint Beat Wesabe3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-10-14
- Quant Based Marketing for Start Ups3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-07-15
- How to spend your first $100 in Facebook Ads2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-03-05
- The 6 Step Guide to Getting Free Press for Your Startup2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-08-14
- Why I got Fired from Facebook (a $100 Million dollar lesson)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-29
- One of the Best Cold Emails I’ve EVER Received2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-18
What Hacker News says?
Ok, here is a concrete example of a communication style that I'm talking about. I wrote: "Hmm, I also think you need a new name. 'Showoff' says exactly what it does, lets you 'showoff' your work. What's a pagekite? (reminds of the 'mint' vs that unpronouncablely named finance site naming issue)." That is feedback from a potential customer that I, as the customer, don't get any sense of what your product is about fro…
Comment linking /2010/10/14/how-mint-beat-wesabe/
on “Showoff”Submitted Why I got Fired from Facebook (a $100 Million dollar lesson) as a story · 159 points
HN discussionA blog post I wrote back in 2007 (on Noah's blog) comparing Google and Daemon: http://okdork.com/2007/06/18/is-google-the-daemon/
Comment linking /2007/06/18/is-google-the-daemon/
on “Google Launches Ingress, a Worldwide Mobile Alternate Reality Game”Submitted Why I got Fired from Facebook (a $100M dollar lesson) (2012) as a story · 68 points
HN discussion37Signals has been doing something similar (with the charity portion). I heard about it while listening to the new podcast by Noah Kagan. For $500, you can go visit 37Signals for a day and see how they work. Price has been rising every year. http://okdork.com/2017/01/19/jason-fried-robots-watches-and-...
Comment linking /2017/01/19/jason-fried-robots-watches-and-not-sweating/
on “Contact Ben Horowitz for $20”Submitted How Mint Beat Wesabe as a story · 58 points
HN discussionYes, best thing to do is research the hell of them before you make any call or email. Some great articles that I've shared with my team: http://www.startupmoon.com/how-i-got-meetings-at-twitter-lin... http://life-longlearner.com/how-to-cold-email-prospects/ http://okdork.com/2013/04/18/cold_email/
Comment linking /2013/04/18/cold_email/
on “Ask HN: Do you cold call?”Submitted 15 Ways to Optimize your Subscription Model as a story · 57 points
HN discussionMy feedback: 1) You could narrow down needs. Imagine how hiring a "tech person" to build a cloud service is too broad. 2) Read about marketing people with technical skills to understand what they do. Decent but dated example: http://okdork.com/2010/10/14/how-mint-beat-wesabe/ Many other examples blur lines too (patio11, SEOMoz, etc) 3) Couldn't tell if they had investors but that might be a source too. As hackers ca…
Comment linking /2010/10/14/how-mint-beat-wesabe/
on “How to find a marketing person?”Submitted How to Usability Test your Start-up for Free as a story · 51 points
HN discussionHere are some best practices I follow: - Post regularly, so every Tuesday, or every Tues/Fri - Make a content calendar for planning - If you link to people or companies let them know, as long as it is valuable they will share the content - Tweet our your articles. Maybe invest in a small campaign Here are some blogs to read to get you started: http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-content-mar... http://ok…
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: How did you build an audience for your blog?”Submitted Startup Tip: How I grew Mint's waiting list to 20,000+ as a story · 44 points
HN discussionForget coding your own landing page and try these services. http://www.unbounce.com and http://www.instapaper.com are paid http://www.launchrock.com is free Spend all your time optimising the landing page and getting traffic to it, rather than coding one up. Read these for landing page optimisation http://unbounce.com/landing-page-articles/the-anatomy-of-a-l... and http://unbounce.com/landing-pages/7-elements-of-a-w…
Comment linking /2014/03/04/how-to-start-advertising-on-facebook/
on “Ask HN: How do you build pre-launch landing pages?”Submitted Quant Based Marketing for Start Ups as a story · 42 points
HN discussionInteresting article. I'm not affiliated with Noah in any way and just now read a few posts from his bolg: http://okdork.com/ Very insightful and interesting. The bonus article when I signed up for the newsletter was about his rise and fall at FB. It was a really...hard to find the words...human tale. I'd recommend having a browse.
Comment linking /
on “What Happens After You Get Shot Down By Mark Zuckerberg?”Submitted Bankaholic sells to Bankrate for 15 million and no one noticed as a story · 39 points
HN discussionMaybe what you you need to do is ad retargeting. See this post on how to spend money effectively on this http://okdork.com/2014/05/21/how-to-spend-your-first-100-on-...
Comment linking /2014/05/21/how-to-spend-your-first-100-on-retargeting-ads
on “Ask HN: I Have No Idea How to Get to my Target Market”Submitted How we Doubled our Conversion Rate in 2 Days as a story · 34 points
HN discussionHappy to hear that you advocate the same hiring tactic. I highly recommend a podcast with Jonathan Siegel on how he used this approach on buying 29 companies and hiring people to run them -> https://okdork.com/buying-a-business-jonathan-siegel/
Comment linking /buying-a-business-jonathan-siegel/
on “How to hire top developers? [step-by-step tactic]”Submitted Email Marketing tips for Reducing your Unsubscriptions as a story · 17 points
HN discussionYou can start here: http://okdork.com/2014/02/09/grow-blog-100000-visitors-less-...
Comment linking /2014/02/09/grow-blog-100000-visitors-less-year/
on “Ask HN: How to increase web traffic?”Submitted Learning Viral: Is your product a natural or add-on? as a story · 16 points
HN discussionI am not trying to be rude, but MS has a lot of useful templates: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=... Also google: https://drive.google.com/templates?q=startup&category=2&sort... This looks good? https://drive.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0AuTYwDzB4XSudEJ... related: http://okdork.com/2010/07/15/quant-based-marketing-for-pre-l...
Comment linking /2010/07/15/quant-based-marketing-for-pre-launch-start-ups/
on “Ask HN: Excel template for software metrics”Submitted 7 Tips to Kick Ass at Technical Outsourcing as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted How We Made over $100k doing Tech Events as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Noah Kagan: Explaining the Basic Viral Model as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Noah Kagan: Learning Viral from Linkedin.com as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Think Long Term, Act Now! as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Startup questions to use for choosing your lawyer as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sales for Startups 101: 3 Rules to Success as a story · 8 points
HN discussion
