Top all-time · #577
Julian.com
Personal blog · julian.com · on HN as julianshapirostartupswriting
Julian.com is a personal blog at julian.com about startups and writing. Since 2014, 105 different Hacker News readers have linked it 167 times, most often “How to Build Muscle”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 25 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link julian.com for its free guides, especially the beginner weightlifting guide and the growth marketing and landing page guides.
- Recommended for · 25 comments
- Called a great free guide, helpful and actionable for beginners, and a good resource on landing pages.
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.
I deconstruct how things work—like writing and storytelling—and share my learnings along the way.
Most-linked posts?
- How to Build Muscle12 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2019-06-05
- The World’s End12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2022-09-15
- How to acquire users: a guide to advanced growth9 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2017-04-05
- Guide on Growth Marketing8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2018-05-09
- What to Do with Your Life7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-02-16
- Writing well7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-07-23
- Mental Model Examples6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-07-19
- Resource I've seen to optimize landing pages5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-01-05
- Velocity.js5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-08-28
- How to Build Muscle5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-10-01
What Hacker News says?
This [1] was posted two days ago on HN, but didn't get visibility but is great to explain HN beginners how they should lift [1] https://www.julian.com/guide/muscle/intro
Comment linking /guide/muscle/intro
on “Select a muscle and it provides the exercises to workout the selected muscle”Submitted Don’t let your anger persist as a story · 312 points
HN discussionI launched ToDesktop back in April, I'm ramen profitable and I'm working on it full-time. I don't know if I would call it a success yet. I want my revenue to reach six figures annually before I call it a success but I'm seeing good growth. Most of my growth now is coming from organic search engine traffic. I've posted some high-leverage page speed + SEO tips on Indie Hackers here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/m…
Comment linking /guide/growth/intro
on “Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?”Submitted How to Build Muscle as a story · 295 points
HN discussionI was exactly in your situation 2 years ago (at the start of COVID) and I know what you're going through. I'm not going to tell you to "stay strong" , emotions are a natural thing and should not be suppressed and it's ok to be vulnerable. However, there are a few things that helped me get through the dark times, I am writing them below in the hopes that you may find them useful: 1. Exercise, this is absolutely criti…
Comment linking /guide/muscle/intro
on “Tell HN: You are not alone this Christmas”- do · 2020-11-26
Submitted Writing well as a story · 279 points
HN discussion I lift weights and do strength training 3 times a week (Julian, if you are reading this, thank you for getting me started on this! [0]). In my experience, you won't experience muscle loss for up to like ~2 weeks as long as you eat your daily calories including your protein requirements. Going on a calorie deficiency is a big problem for your muscles; hence if you want to lose weight after gaining muscles, you should…
Comment linking /learn/muscle/intro
on “A little exercise each day improves muscles more than one big weekly workout”Submitted The importance of upvoting as a story · 181 points
HN discussionFWIW: If you're asking about marketing after you've built a product, you're doing things in the wrong order. That's why I've included Rob's Start Small, Stay Small as one of core ideas is market validation. From a review: "not about coding but about [finding] a great niche, building a product that executes at a plateau and make it run automatically" "The other resource I'd recommend is the one I'm releasing in ~3 we…
Comment linking /learn/growth/intro
on “Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?”Submitted Startup stress: Handling competition as a story · 72 points
HN discussionBell Curve [ http://BellCurve.com ] | $40/hr USD | Growth Marketer | Remote | But must be in North America | Full-time The position: - We're a top startup growth agency (BellCurve.com). We run growth for several YC companies. - We need a remote growth copywriter. We'll teach you growth. Prior knowledge not required. - $40 USD/hr. Full-time remote, but North America only. No current students. Requirements: - You must…
Comment linking /learn/growth
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2017)”Submitted Velocity.js as a story · 55 points
HN discussionBell Curve [ http://BellCurve.com ] | $40/hr USD | Remote | But must be in North America | Full-time | Growth Copywriter The position: - We're a top startup growth agency (BellCurve.com). We run growth for several YC companies. - We need a remote growth copywriter. We'll teach you growth. Prior knowledge not required. - $40 USD/hr. Full-time remote, but North America only. No current students. Requirements: - You mu…
Comment linking /learn/growth
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2017)”Submitted Show HN: Blast.js separates text for typographic manipulation as a story · 49 points
HN discussionIf you're looking to build a great landing page, I found this resource suuuuper helpful when designing our landing page: https://www.julian.com/learn/growth/landing-pages "I want you to think of landing page optimization from the perspective of desire: Conversion = Desire (Increase this) - Labor (Decrease this) - Confusion (Decrease this) It's less work to reduce a visitor's labor and confusion than to increase desi…
Comment linking /learn/growth/landing-pages
on “Ask HN: Examples of great landing pages?”Submitted Mental Model Examples as a story · 23 points
HN discussionAs a fellow note-taking application maker ( https://quicknotes.io ), a friendly advice: you need a better landing page. Show me how it looks before asking for signing up (screenshots). Better yet, have a demo with publicly visible notes. Reduce signing up friction by allowing twitter/google/github/facebook logins. In "what is this" you talk a lot about you and technologies used. People don't care about that. Write a…
Comment linking /learn/growth/landing-pages
on “Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?”Submitted The World’s End as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI sit ~10 hours daily, including 2+ hours driving. I'm naturally skinny but haven't done much physical exercises in recent years ("busy"). Now, at age of 34, I'm starting to realize that my body won't last forever and finally started to exercise few times per week, after I found motivating enough guide¹. It amazing how much more energized it makes you feel. [1] https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro
Comment linking /learn/muscle/intro
on “Too much sitting, too little exercise may accelerate biological aging”Submitted The importance of upvoting as a story · 16 points
HN discussionAudience size usually correlates pretty well with time + money invested; if there are any shortcuts there's not much incentive to share them here. If you're looking for a free source of relatively fresh ideas, try https://www.julian.com/learn/growth Do you do content marketing (blogging) to an email list?
Comment linking /learn/growth
on “Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project”Submitted How to Tell Great Stories as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI haven't done this program, but I've always liked the way this guide is put together: https://www.julian.com/guide/muscle/
Comment linking /guide/muscle/
on “Show HN: I made a community sourced fitness routine database”Submitted Storytelling: The art of telling spoken stories as a story · 13 points
HN discussionWrote a guide that summarizes the science of building muscle: https://julian.com/learn/muscle/intro . It made a few thousand in Amazon referral fees after being at the top of HN, Product Hunt, and Designer News for 4 days. As these traffic spikes wear off, I expect it to continue at at least $1k/mo. To maximize referral fees, I use this clever service called A-fwd, which geo-redirects visitors to their appropriate A…
Comment linking /learn/muscle/intro
on “Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?”Submitted How to acquire users: a guide to advanced growth as a story · 12 points
HN discussionVelocity.js http://julian.com/research/velocity/ is pretty damn good already and just 12kb Gzipped.
Comment linking /research/velocity/
on “Show HN: Snabbt.js – a minimalistic animation library”Submitted Writing Well: A Process for Nonfiction as a story · 9 points
HN discussionDefinitely, I listed a few examples of great resources to make a point on the article. Another resource that seems like it might be great that I'm currently reading is Julian Shapiro's growth marketing guide - https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro It is long form text, which is an automatic -1 for me, and I dismissed this for a while, but over time it's seemed to come out as one of those "great" resources in a d…
Comment linking /guide/growth/intro
on “The more you learn, the faster you can learn”Submitted Armageddon: The Odds of Nuclear War as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
