Top all-time · #1226
Spencer Fry
Personal blog · spencerfry.com · on HN as spencerfrystartupsbusinesscareer
Spencer Fry's personal blog at spencerfry.com covers startups, business and career. Since 2009, 59 different Hacker News readers have linked it 126 times, most often “What's A Non-Programmer To Do? (How I keep myself busy.)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- What's A Non-Programmer To Do? (How I keep myself busy.)13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2009-10-28
- How to bootstrap your company to profitability4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-05-05
- When and Why to Learn to Program2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-01-23
- What's A Non-Programmer To Do? (Advanced)2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-12-08
- What I've Learned Since Releasing Uncover (With Numbers)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-08-16
- Idea Shaping: One idea at a time. Preferably one you love.2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-08-04
- No PM, no problem: how we ship great products fast2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-14
- Three's Company (Why three co-founders is better than two.)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-11-18
- Why Entrepreneurs Are Scared of Talking to Users2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-25
- From Business Guy to Programmer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-04-12
What Hacker News says?
https://www.uncover.com has been up and running for about four months now. We're bootstrapped and doing a bit over $5,000/month in recurring revenue. I wrote a three-month recap on our progress last month: http://spencerfry.com/what-i-ve-learned-since-releasing-unco...
Comment linking /what-i-ve-learned-since-releasing-uncover
on “Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?”Submitted What's A Non-Programmer To Do? (How I keep myself busy.) as a story · 154 points
HN discussionRE non-technical founders: the first part of building a company is building a successful product/service, and technical founders can do that with sweat equity. Non-technical founders can still add value, but they need technical people to make the product. Spencer Fry of CarbonMade has written some great stuff about duties for non-technical founders: http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
Comment linking /whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
on “Paul Graham on Mixergy, today 2pm EST/11am PST”Submitted Bootstrap Marketing: Ideas that don't suck as a story · 122 points
HN discussionThanks! I go into that here: http://spencerfry.com/introducing-uncover
Comment linking /introducing-uncover
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted How to bootstrap your company to profitability as a story · 118 points
HN discussionNot my intention. I'll follow up with more how I learned to program posts. I have some from a few months ago. See http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program for example.
Comment linking /why-and-when-to-learn-to-program
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted Startup vs. Company as a story · 98 points
HN discussionThank you, muster! Happy to answer your questions. 1. I've dabbled in web design for a longtime, although I did not design Uncover's marketing site. jakeprzespo.com did that. I did work with my partner Mike to design the internal pages of the site. 2. I started learning to program in February, 2012 and have gotten progressively better since then. I launched the original version of Uncover completely on my own at the…
Comment linking /programming-resources
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted Down With Social as a story · 96 points
HN discussionSure. I wrote a little bit about it here http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program and I'll write more about that on my blog in the near future. We're using Ruby on Rails as our backend code and mainly picked that because that's what most of my friends were good in and I knew that I could go to them with any questions.
Comment linking /why-and-when-to-learn-to-program
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted Platforms are for Suckers: Why you shouldn't build your business on one. as a story · 91 points
HN discussionI'll follow up with a more detailed post, but here's one from a few months ago: http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program I started learning to code in February, 2012 and have been going at it ever since. I've had great mentors and it's taken what feels like a long time to get to where I am.
Comment linking /why-and-when-to-learn-to-program
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted How to Acquire Users for Free as a story · 84 points
HN discussionHere's one from a few months ago: http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program I wanted to keep the most recent blog post solely focused on Uncover. I'll follow up with more coding posts shortly.
Comment linking /why-and-when-to-learn-to-program
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted From Business Guy to Programmer as a story · 83 points
HN discussionHere's a post on learning to code: http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program I'll follow up with some more code posts in the future. I wanted to keep the "Introducing Uncover" post to be focused on the startup.
Comment linking /why-and-when-to-learn-to-program
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted 100,000 Users And So Can You (A history of Carbonmade) as a story · 68 points
HN discussionHere's my blog post on our launch: http://spencerfry.com/introducing-uncover
Comment linking /introducing-uncover
on “Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup”Submitted On writing: Why entrepreneurs should write as a story · 66 points
HN discussionI think that was a comment on your blog ! I bookmarked the comment as it was the first time I heard about this too. It was here : http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
Comment linking /whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
on “When to Use PayPal vs. Merchant Account”Submitted From working remotely to out of an office. as a story · 65 points
HN discussionThis was a great read. Funny timing in that I just announced that I've been writing a book earlier today: http://spencerfry.com/i-m-writing-a-book
Comment linking /i-m-writing-a-book
on “Adventures in Self Publishing”Submitted Idea Shaping: One idea at a time. Preferably one you love. as a story · 58 points
HN discussionRelated: What's A Non-Programmer To Do? by Spencer Fry http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
Comment linking /whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
on “Things a Non-Engineer Should Know Before Founding a Web Startup”Submitted Freemium Model as a story · 53 points
HN discussionFunny you should ask! I wrote two articles about the specific things I did at Carbonmade as the CEO: http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do (This was actually based on a 1,000 day old Hacker News comment of mine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779378 ) http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do-advanced
Comment linking /whats-a-non-programmer-to-do-advanced
on “From Business Guy to Programmer”Submitted The Domain Market is a Mess as a story · 52 points
HN discussionHere's spencerfry's fantastic list of what non-programmers bring to a startup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779448 <- HN post http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do <- full article If you're looking to add someone to your team, you want someone who will do as much from this list as possible.
Comment linking /whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
on “Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?”Submitted Why you should attract "the Normals" as a story · 45 points
HN discussion
