Top all-time · #11218
Samuel Mullen
Personal blog · samuelmullen.comprogrammingcareer
Samuel Mullen's personal blog at samuelmullen.com covers programming and career. Since 2012, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 46 times, most often “Just Enough Erlang”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his article on startup fallacies, including 'if you build it, they will come', when discussing why launched products get no users. The comments cite the post without judging its writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-build-it-they-will-come/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-09
- Just Enough Erlang2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-08-09
What Hacker News says?
> "Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore. Did it ever? I feel like this omits the mechanism for people to get to know there is something to come to and reasons for them to come. Not sure why this saying really exists. If someone builds a pile of garbage, I won't come, even if I knew about it, and I definitely won't be telling other people about it either. EDIT: so the phrase is a variation on some phrase…
Comment linking /articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-build-it-they-will-come/
on “Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?”Submitted The Introvert's Networking Survival Guide: Large Events as a story · 82 points
HN discussionWhen you built your app, whom did you build it for? Presumably you built it for a specific customer segment in mind, so did you try searching for them on Google or elsewhere? Or did you build it for no one? That is why you're struggling to get users, because if you actually had built it for a specific persona, then you'd know exactly where to find them. You're not actually doing anything different to the author of t…
Comment linking /articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-build-it-they-will-come
on “I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again”Submitted So You Want to be A Freelancer as a story · 72 points
HN discussionAhh, the ol' "if you build it, they will come" strategy. Pretty much considered a fallacy at this point. https://samuelmullen.com/articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-b...
Comment linking /articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-build-it-they-will-come/
on “So You Want to Compete with Steam (2018)”Submitted The Costs of Keeping Your Rails App Up to Date, Or Not as a story · 51 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evaluating Rails Projects as a story · 48 points
HN discussionSubmitted The "How"s, "What"s, and "Why"s of Elixir Telemetry as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Your Company Should Sponsor Tech Conferences as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Just Enough Erlang as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building Custom Producers with Elixir's Broadway as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Elixir Protocols as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Just Enough Erlang as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Getting Acquainted with Elixir's Plug Library as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The 12 Freelancer Archetypes as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using Swift's Closures With NSTimer as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Elixir Processes: Spawn, Send, and Receive as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Implementing Swift's Hashable Protocol as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mind the Gap as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Elixir, Poolboy, and Little's Law as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Understanding Elixir's Broadway as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Elixir Telemetry: Metrics and Reporters as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Google Fast as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Effective Code Reviews as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Review of Dash, the API documentation browser and code snippet manager as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Performance Testing in Xcode 6 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted ProTips for Freelancers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tests Are Pain as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why It's Okay to Write Crummy Code as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Advice on Attracting Good Developers as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
