Top all-time · #271
Andrew Chen
Personal blog · andrewchen.costartupsbusinesscareer
Andrew Chen writes andrewchen, a personal blog at andrewchen.co about startups, business and career. Since 2012, 181 different Hacker News readers have linked it 283 times, most often “How to be a growth hacker”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Chen's growth and startup posts (user growth, CAC/LTV, Craigslist growth tactics, funding, RSS) as reference material. Often cited for a single point.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called right on RSS feedback loops, a good explainer of Everpix's funding, a favourite for tactics, and worth learning from.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- How to be a growth hacker6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2012-07-11
- Why investors don’t fund dating5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-05-26
- The Power User Curve: The best way to understand your most engaged users5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-08-06
- Mobile app startups are failing like it’s 1999 (2012)4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2012-08-16
- The Next Feature Fallacy4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-06-01
- Revisit: Andrew Chen's Law of Shitty Click Throughs3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-09-24
- Zero to Product/Market Fit (Presentation)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-10-14
- The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in startup's metrics3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-11-01
- The Product Death Cycle: Why it happens, and how to break out of it3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-06-16
- Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-09-10
What Hacker News says?
The question is not whether or not HN users' decision processes aare representative, but whether or not the end results are. App adoption and use, overall, is low. Consumers Spend 85% Of Time On Smartphones In Apps, But Only 5 Apps See Heavy Use https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time... App Download and Usage Statistics (2018) The total number of mobile app downloads in 2017 – 197 billion (a fo…
Comment linking /new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-mobile-users-is-normal-and-that-the-best-apps-do-much-better/
on “Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App”Submitted The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in startup's metrics as a story · 384 points
HN discussionUnfortunately blogs are missing a strong feedback loop. If RSS was the notification mechanism, then what was it that closed the loop so the blogger got great info on what was being read, liked, disliked? Chen gets this right here: https://andrewchen.co/the-death-of-rss-in-a-single-graph/ The internet is full of people with incredible ideas, many of which are writing them down, but the problem is discovery. How to co…
Comment linking /the-death-of-rss-in-a-single-graph/
on “If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs”Submitted Ten years of professional blogging – what I’ve learned as a story · 362 points
HN discussionFor your self-fulfilling prophecy theory to be valid, venture capital would have to be able to ensure that your contribution margin is staying constant. Eg: if you make $1 per sale in CM at $1m in revenue in 2020, will you also make $1 per sale in CM at $100m in revenue in 2025? The reality is that unit economics change massively with scale and with time, and only a select few companies get the contribution margin t…
Comment linking /the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/
on “The Airbnbs”Submitted “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups as a story · 317 points
HN discussionIndigo Agriculture | Back-end, front-end, DevOps, PM, Data Science, Computational Biologist | Boston, MA | Full-time | On-site | https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ================ We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0]. Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trill…
Comment linking /how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2019)”Submitted Why developers are leaving the Facebook platform as a story · 288 points
HN discussionTo me, the cautionary warning (echoing Andrew Chen's[1]) for consumer startups was key: Beware too of the edge case where something spreads rapidly but the churn is high too, so that you have good net growth till you run through all the potential users, at which point it suddenly stops Sean Ellis[2] has a similar test for product market fit (the 40% rule ): I ask existing users of a product how they would feel if th…
Comment linking /2012/06/20/quora-when-does-high-growth-not-imply-productmarket-fit/
on “Startup = Growth”Submitted Why investors don’t fund dating as a story · 232 points
HN discussionFrom Andrew Chen: "There’s only a few ways to scale user growth, and here’s the list" http://andrewchen.co/theres-only-a-few-ways-to-scale-user-gr...
Comment linking /theres-only-a-few-ways-to-scale-user-growth-and-heres-the-list/
on “Startup advice, briefly”Submitted Mobile app startups are failing like it’s 1999 as a story · 226 points
HN discussionIndigo Agriculture | Back-end, front-end, DevOps, PM, Data Science, Computational Biologist | Boston, MA | Full-time | On-site | https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ================ We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0]. Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trill…
Comment linking /how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2019)”Submitted The Next Feature Fallacy as a story · 137 points
HN discussionIndigo Agriculture | Software engineers (all levels) | Boston, MA | Full-time | On-site OR REMOTE | https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ================ We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0] and was just recently named CNBCs Most Disruptive Business beating out Airbnb, Stripe, Flexport, and more [3]. Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is…
Comment linking /how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2019)”Submitted Losing 80% of mobile users is normal as a story · 115 points
HN discussionDevelopers seem to flock to platforms like Apple, Facebook and Twitter based on the fact that they have a large and growing user base without giving thought to this issue of commoditization of complements and how the ultimately destroy the business or livelihood of these developers. Most people building products or sharecropping on other people's platform never make meaningful income and yet those platform keep will…
Comment linking /2012/08/15/mobile-app-startups-are-failing-like-its-1999/
on “Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead”Submitted Conservation of Intent: why A/B tests aren’t as effective as they look as a story · 108 points
HN discussionYou should look into improving your Single User Utility. Here are some links to get started: http://avc.com/2012/12/single-user-utility-in-a-social-syste... http://andrewchen.co/social-products-win-with-utility-not-in... http://platformed.info/seeding-platform-standalone-square-op... There are also countless examples of successful two-sided marketplaces who started out by "nurturing" (aka faking) one side of the mar…
Comment linking /social-products-win-with-utility-not-invites-guest-post/
on “Before You Grow”Submitted Why getting traction is so hard these days as a story · 100 points
HN discussionIndigo Agriculture | Back-end, front-end, DevOps, PM, Data Science, Computational Biologist | Boston, MA | Full-time | On-site | https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ================ We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0]. Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trill…
Comment linking /how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2019)”Submitted Retention is King as a story · 96 points
HN discussionIndigo Agriculture | Back-end, front-end, DevOps, PM, Data Science, Computational Biologist | Boston, MA | Full-time | On-site | https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ================ We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0]. Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trill…
Comment linking /how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2019)”Submitted Mobile app startups are failing like it’s 1999 (2012) as a story · 90 points
HN discussionIndigo Agriculture | Back-end, front-end, DevOps, PM, Data Science, Computational Biologist | Boston, MA | Full-time | On-site | https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ================ We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0]. Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trill…
Comment linking /how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2019)”Submitted When a great product hits the funding crunch as a story · 84 points
HN discussionIt's not that he doesn't have revenue, I doubt it even has persistent users. Users are generally 30-day active (trailing average). Here we're talking about a spike in traffic that the project got after some public exposure on news sites, I doubt we could predict at this point if everything will drop into the Trough of sorrow [1] or stick. Personally I tried the game and it seems to be at the first iteration in terms…
Comment linking /2012/09/10/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the-trough-of-sorrow/
on “I’m tired. So I’m selling my game that just went viral”Submitted Mockups for a free, ad-supported Uber service as a story · 83 points
HN discussionIndigo Agriculture | Software engineers (all levels) | Boston, MA | Full-time | On-site OR REMOTE | https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ================ We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0] and was just recently named CNBCs Most Disruptive Business beating out Airbnb, Stripe, Flexport, and more [3]. Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is…
Comment linking /how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2019)”Submitted Ways to scale user growth as a story · 70 points
HN discussion
