I’ve been hesitating to publicize my project because there’s always something more I can add, or a bug to fix. I think things like: If I do a “Show HN” post, will I get too many users at the same time? Is there a better way to quietly get the first few customers and fix the issues that they uncover?
I’m reading “The Mom Test” now to learn how to talk to potential users.
New users' posts to "Show HN" seem to be marked as possible spam sometimes and appear as [dead]. I guess we shouldn't be discouraged if it happens and just try again.
Doing a Show HN and getting too many users would be a great problem to have! In most cases it takes a lot of work to get any users, so I wouldn't be trying to limit it at all if I were you. Good luck!
main reason many Show HN posts are not getting upvotes is because they are either: boring, bad fit for this community or most people can’t understand what problem they’re solving (eg. lack documentation, too technical)
Maybe if you’re trying to run a business and need more DAU’s, not so much if you’re trying to donate software to open source and don’t want to see twenty shallow dismissals about how it’s wrong/could be better (but god forbid anyone actually submit a pull request or issue!)
Your contribution process can be too cumbersome/hostile for this to be worthwhile. Almost everything calling itself a "wiki" nowadays falls in this category, for example—because they're modelled on GitHub's wikis, i.e., they're not really wikis. Other stuff hosted on GitHub is like this, generally, for that matter. GitHub is like Facebook: perceived to be extremely convenient for everyone who already lives their lives there—so it's hard for them to see the costs—but actually revealed to be incredibly operationally inefficient to anyone willing to measure it. I've stopped filing bugs on GitHub entirely because of a combination of these factors (velocity) along with GitHub's worse-than-Facebook stance on privacy and the general low quality of interactions that occur there. For anyone not primarily concerned with collecting green squares and its adjacent activities, it's not worth the time.
"I’ve been hesitating to publicize my project because there’s always something more I can add"
This is why I only spend a week max on projects i put on HN. Once I hit the main page, but most of the time I am flagged or ignored. I would be devastated if I spent 3 years on something and it failed. I work on something for a week, post it, laugh, move on.
Probably noone will look at it. HN is imo not the best for sharing your own content as the rules and moderation are fairly heavily skewed against it. Having said that, if it gets traction on HN and ends up on the front page it will do very well.
Also, don't worry too much about perfection. It's actually better to launch something before it is perfect, since the hard part is not actually doing the project, but getting anyone to care. Better to get That step out of the way as fast as possible.
I’m reading “The Mom Test” now to learn how to talk to potential users.
Here’s what I’m working on: https://headlamptest.com
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