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Stacking the Bricks
Personal blog · stackingthebricks.comstartupsbusiness
Stacking the Bricks is a personal blog at stackingthebricks.com about startups and business. Since 2017, 50 different Hacker News readers have linked it 108 times, most often “How the Blog Broke the Web”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-01-10, and you can follow it by feed.
Ship more stuff. Make more money. Help more people.
Most-linked posts?
- How the Blog Broke the Web11 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2018-06-30
- Build Your Business, One Win at a Time9 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2017-06-03
- /4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-05-22
- Why Blacksmiths Are Better at Startups Than You4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-03-07
- /video-sales-safari-in-action/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-03-08
- Things I Wish Somebody Told Me Before I Founded My SaaS3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-07-10
- How to survive panic in business and life2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-25
- Build a Tiny Product First2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-17
- Entreporn2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-08-22
- Eliminate your #1 cause of struggle2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-04
What Hacker News says?
This is a very valuable point. I think [0] that a better approach, one that’s more likely to lead to a profitable business, is to flip the strategy around. Instead of “Do customer interviews, sniff out a problem, and build a solution”, it can be more effective to find the customers where they hang out (online is ideal), observe the problems they complain about, and crucially observe what they already pay for . For o…
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on “My Second Year as a Solo Developer”Submitted How the Blog Broke the Web as a story · 230 points
HN discussionYou're having trouble creating/contributing back because you're not sure what other people need from you (when you find them, it'll be like someone opened your faucet for creativity). Try doing a sales safari※ for an audience you want to help and see what happens. Find people with expensive problems† and help them solve those problems with your words, a software product, or consulting. ※ https://stackingthebricks.co…
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on “Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?”Submitted My magic response to “Hey, can I pick your brain?” as a story · 24 points
HN discussion> Maybe it's the wrong mindset, but imo compensation is precisely why the internet stopped being like that. When people are doing things for free, there is generally a maximum to the amount of effort they will put into things. It's the other way around. When there is no compensation, people do stuff for fun, out of love, and not for optimisation, ROI, DAU/MAU, etc. "Back in the days" - pre-dot-com - the website was…
Comment linking /how-blogs-broke-the-web/
on “YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos”Submitted Build a Tiny Product First as a story · 19 points
HN discussionFlip it on its head: don’t start with an idea. Start by identifying a group of people you belong to (e.g. “Rails developers”), because it gives you an instant leg up in knowing their struggles. Then research their struggles. Write about them, and solve them. Grow an audience (read: email list). After all that research you’ll have a solid idea of what they already want and buy, and you can create that for them. Plus…
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on “20,000 Startup Ideas”Submitted How the Blog Broke the Web as a story · 17 points
HN discussion> haven't talked to many potentially users? Any bad answer to these questions is a showstopper, yes. It's an indicator that this company is definitely going to fail. In your example, not having talked to many customers is the classical Juicero approach: Build a solution, then search for a problem that this solution is solving. Not talking to customers means not understanding if there is demand for something, and if…
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on “Business questions engineers should ask when interviewing at ML/AI companies”Submitted How the Blog Broke the Web as a story · 16 points
HN discussionRight, how to be relevant to both the decision maker as well as the end-user is a key question. I'm working on a product in a similar space, and struggling with the question for our own marketing materials. Amy Hoy's material [1] on audience "worldviews" has been helpful so far. (No personal affiliation.) Best of luck with your launch! [1] https://stackingthebricks.com/niches-are-for-suckers/
Comment linking /niches-are-for-suckers/
on “Show HN: I trained a deep learning model to build sites for me”Submitted Eliminate your #1 cause of struggle as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThis is maybe a meta-suggestion, more focused on chunking down problems and the process of working and shipping, but Amy Hoy’s Just Fucking Ship is full of useful advice on how to actually get things out the door. (I’ve taken their 30x500 class too, which is also excellent) https://stackingthebricks.com/just-fucking-ship/
Comment linking /just-fucking-ship/
on “Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?”Submitted How the Blog Broke the Web as a story · 11 points
HN discussionOr just follow Amy Hoy's advice[0] and only raise the price for new customers. They probably could have bumped their prices by more than $1/month (and sooner) if they had taken that approach. [0] https://stackingthebricks.com/one-weird-trick-to-raising-you...
Comment linking /one-weird-trick-to-raising-your-monthly-price-without-a-customer-revolt/
on “Raising Prices Is Hard”Submitted How to survive panic in business and life as a story · 11 points
HN discussionHahah, that's the rub. Being a consultant can be a good way to acquire domain expertise, as long as you are vertically focused: "I solve problems for realtors" rather than tech focused "I build web applications" or "I build mobile applications in Swift". Downside: can be scary to specialize, will take some time. Another way to do that is to actually do the job or take a job in a company that is not a software compan…
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on “Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea”Submitted Developers don't pay for things as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIt is posts like this that make me feel a bit mediocre. I have labored for two years on my blog ( https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/ ), written guest posts, given talks, and written a book. But I have nowhere near 1000 subscribers and my book announcement list was far under 100 folks. I wonder whether I am not focused enough, don't deliver enough value, targetted the wrong audience, or picked the wrong marketing pl…
Comment linking /why-you-should-do-a-tiny-product-first/
on “How I generated incomes as a web developer without working as a freelancer”Submitted Things I Wish Somebody Told Me Before I Founded My SaaS as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI started a blog on the side in 2015 as I was taking the 30x500 business class, built up an email list, and later wrote a book that teaches folks about the React JS library. I launched the book in 2016. I still have a job at this point, but the book continues to sell, and I have more products in the works. It's not been fast. There are no hockey-stick graphs. But it's slow steady growth, and still seems to be growin…
Comment linking /podcast/ep27-you-can-ship-but-will-anybody-buy/
on “Ask HN: How did you start your business?”Submitted Kindle Direct Publishing recommends format incompatible with Kindle devices as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis reminded me of an essay by Amy Hoy: https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/
Comment linking /entreporn/
on “The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’”Submitted Things I Wish Somebody Told Me Before I Founded My SaaS as a story · 3 points
HN discussionRead this, it's heavily related: "How the Blog Broke the Web" https://stackingthebricks.com/how-blogs-broke-the-web/
Comment linking /how-blogs-broke-the-web/
on “I Miss the Old Internet (2019)”Submitted How the Blog Broke the Web as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDuplicating other points, to some extent: 1. You can reduce your working hours. E.g. you can negotiate a 4-day workweek. This means more time to do what you want. 2. You can pursue early retirement. Reducing your spending gives you more in the bank, and eventually you can not work. In the short term it improves your negotiating position. 3. You can find a job pursuing a goal you care about. E.g. work for a non-profi…
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on “Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?”Submitted Why Blacksmiths Are Better at Startups Than You as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'd recommend: - the lean startup: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous... - Amy Hoy's blog: https://stackingthebricks.com/ - working in the domain you are interested in for a year. Go be a realtor. Go work in a lawncare business. etc. etc. - read Patrick's advice about how he found customers for Appointment reminder: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/05/14/unveiling-my-second-pro... edit: added…
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on “Five years as a startup CTO: How, why, and was it worth it? (2024)”Submitted How the Blog Broke the Web (2017) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
