Top all-time · #1250
Vinicius Vacanti
Personal blog · viniciusvacanti.com · on HN as vacantistartupsbusinesscareer
Vinicius Vacanti's personal blog at viniciusvacanti.com covers startups, business and career. Since 2010, 55 different Hacker News readers have linked it 79 times, most often “How To Get Your First 1,000 Users”. The last post was in 2014, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Vinicius Vacanti's blog of early-startup essays, covering technical co-founders, learning to code, getting first users, and when to stop a failing business.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Praised as great advice for first-time founders and a helpful overview of finding a technical co-founder and getting first users.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Lessons Learned as a First-TIme Enterpreneur
Most-linked posts?
- How To Get Your First 1,000 Users7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2011-02-08
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2011-03-16
- The Shortcut We Took to Build Yipit In Three Days3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-12-20
- Things You Need to Learn To Build Your Own Prototype2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-06-04
- Can't Find a Technical Co-Founder? Do It Yourself2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-31
- Why I Quit My Job to Start a Tech Company2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-08-03
- The Long Grind Before You Become an Overnight Success2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-09-12
- How to know when to launch your startup2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-04-03
- Why Instagram Took Off and Your Startup Hasn’t2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-19
- How We Fooled Ourselves Into Waiting Too Long To Launch2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-04-02
What Hacker News says?
There are quite a few quantitative indicators for businesses on exit conditions; for web businesses in particular, see eg: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/12/12/when-do-you-throw-in-t...
Comment linking /2011/12/12/when-do-you-throw-in-the-towel-on-your-struggling-project/
on “How My Start-Up Failed”Submitted The Long Grind Before You Become an Overnight Success as a story · 365 points
HN discussionAnother data point to support the three year number being thrown about, this one from the founder of Yipit writing about their early struggles: "It took us almost three years to know what exactly we had to do during those three days." http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/09/12/the-long-grind-before-...
Comment linking /2011/09/12/the-long-grind-before-you-become-an-overnight-success/
on “It takes three years to build a business”Submitted Why I Quit My Job to Start a Tech Company as a story · 222 points
HN discussionGuys, this is an under-informed and reactionary post, which grossly simplifies the situation in a way that is insulting to Dropbox, TechCrunch/AOL, CrunchFund, and the Mailbox/Orchestra team. It's also kind of upsetting that this post is at the top of HN and getting a kind of froth-at-the-mouth reaction that it is. It's well-known and indeed massively controversial[1] that there's a CrunchFund/TechCrunch conflict. A…
Comment linking /2012/11/19/the-depressing-day-after-you-get-techcrunched/
on “TechCrunch Pump n Dump”Submitted The Depressing Day After You Get TechCrunched as a story · 148 points
HN discussionVinicius Vacanti of Yipit - http://viniciusvacanti.com/ Dan Shipper - http://danshipper.com/
Comment linking /
on “Few successful entrepreneurs blog”Submitted How To Get Your First 1,000 Users as a story · 146 points
HN discussionVin (of Yipit) has a similar blog post ( http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/cant-find-a-technical-co-... ) but from the perspective of someone who actually just got down into it and wrote the entire site. While not uniquely a NYC problem, it was refreshing to be out in the Bay Area and not be at startup events hearing MBAs pitch "it's like Facebook, but for dogs!" I tell everyone that asks me about finding a technic…
Comment linking /2010/09/cant-find-a-technical-co-founder-do-it-yourself/
on “Stop Looking for a Technical Co-Founder, Learn to Code Yourself”Submitted How New Ideas Almost Killed Our Startup as a story · 136 points
HN discussionI am surprised to see this question resurfacing last half year because I think that the answer to this question was pretty much nailed down by Vinicius Vacanti in his blog post in Sep 2010 http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/27/should-you-hire-a-prog... In short - it depends on the nature of your start-up and the challenges your start-up is tackling. Depending on those you 3 options: 1. Find tech co-founder (and don'…
Comment linking /2010/09/13/cant-find-a-technical-co-founder-do-it-yourself/
on “Why You Don't Need A Programmer”Submitted Advice I Wish I Could've Given Myself 5 Years Ago as a story · 132 points
HN discussionThese from user "keeptrying" in item http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239780 : http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/04/in-the-pursuit-o... http://tractionbook.com/ http://cdixon.org/2009/08/25/six-strategies-for-overcoming-c... http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-... http://www.quora.com/In-the-shortest-amount-of-time-whats-th... http://betali.st/submit
Comment linking /2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-1000-users/
on “Ask HN: Obtaining initial users for a startup”Submitted How We Fooled Ourselves Into Waiting Too Long To Launch as a story · 128 points
HN discussionOP left a quarter-million a year hedge fund job to swing for the fences. I'd guess his floor for "acceptable" exits is in the multiple millions. Your personal mileage my vary. http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/08/03/why-i-quit-my-job-to-s...
Comment linking /2011/08/03/why-i-quit-my-job-to-start-a-tech-company/
on “The Manual-First Startup”Submitted Stop Saying ‘Let me know when works for you’ as a story · 107 points
HN discussionRead this great blog post from Vincius which aptly answers your question: http://viniciusvacanti.com/page/2/
Comment linking /page/2/
on “Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?”Submitted How To Get Your First 1,000 Users (2011) as a story · 106 points
HN discussionI think this how Yipit started. They initially were looking to do bar deals in nyc. http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/03/26/how-getting-rejected-b...
Comment linking /2012/03/26/how-getting-rejected-by-founder-collective-helped-save-our-startup/
on “Show HN: VA kids love drinking, hate paying. Step 1. Thoughts?”Submitted The Manual-First Startup as a story · 96 points
HN discussionSame - Infection Details URL: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/08/14/th.. . Process: C:\Users\James\AppData\Local\Google\Chro... Infection: JS:Redirector-MA [Trj]
Comment linking /2012/08/14/th..
on “These Books Helped Save Our Startup”Submitted Lessons Learned Raising a $6 Million Round as a story · 84 points
HN discussionYou should read Vinicius Vacanti's blog, "How To Make It As a First Time Entrepreneur" ( http://viniciusvacanti.com/ ). He quit a prestigious finance job to do his own thing, and it took him a while to figure his way around. I recommend reading his whole story from the beginning, I think it will inspire you.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: I quit my job .. now what?”Submitted How Our Startup Got Featured on CNN as a story · 80 points
HN discussionA few days ago an article on "delayed launches"[1] was posted here on HN. We took a step back from our computers, looked at each other, and laughed nervously. The article was about us. The thing is, the author couldn't possibly have known about us as we've been too afraid to leave the comfort of our stealth mode. We've wasted so much time tweaking our concept in utter fear of how the community would receive us. Mant…
Comment linking /2012/04/02/how-we-fooled-ourselves-into-delaying-our-startups-launch/
on “Show HN: Learning to let go - our hosted real-time platform”Submitted How I Learned to Code as a story · 71 points
HN discussionhttp://viniciusvacanti.com/ His blog has great advice for new entrepreneurs. Especially when you don't have a tech co-founder... He covers in depth how he went about learning to code a basic prototype and provides a solid outline to go about doing so.
Comment linking /
on “CEO of Yipit on how he learned to code & changed the trajectory of Yipit”Submitted Don't launch a company, launch an experiment as a story · 61 points
HN discussionHey Lance, It took me awhile to find my CTO. Here are my recommendations: 1) Outsource: http://www.sourcebits.com/ 2) Keep doing it yourself: http://viniciusvacanti.com/ I am currently in College and think I have a scalable idea. Kept searching in till someone believed me. However, even since I found my CTO, I'm teaching myself how to code to just build a basic crude prototype with no hard coding or algorithms. Most…
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: The lengths I will go to in order to find a technical co-founder”Submitted When Do You Throw in the Towel On Your Struggling Project? as a story · 50 points
HN discussion
