Number
Hacker News could make $8M/year with no employees
Shaan estimates that valued off revenue, Hacker News would be worth $50-100M, and that it could generate about $8M a year in revenue with no employees, a capacity it's had for roughly a decade.
$8M
Estimated annual revenue with no employees · USD/year
“But if you were just like a normal guy and you had it valued off revenues, I think it would be $50 to $100 million. I bet you it can make $8 million a year in revenue with no employees, and I bet you it's been capable of doing that for about 10 years.”
Idea
Build the Hacker News for crypto (not about price)
Sam pitches a crypto news aggregator modeled on Hacker News, with a strict no-price-talk rule so technology and usage discussions aren't drowned out by daily price moves. He suggests a figurehead like Pomp is positioned to own it.
“Hey, I think somebody can create this. I think maybe Pomp or somebody who's like a central figurehead in crypto similar to Paul Graham, maybe Pomp should be creating the Hacker News for crypto that is specifically not about price. I think that would be a smart move. If I was Pomp, I would consider doing that.”
Steal thisLaunch a niche 'Hacker News for X' with one firewall rule that bans the topic everyone defaults to (e.g. price).
Fact
Social-news aggregators: lightning in a bottle, gold once caught
Shaan's take on news aggregators like Hacker News, Techmeme, and Lets Run: they're brutally hard to start (you need posters, moderation, anti-bot tech, and content quality), but if you catch the magical network effect they're one of the best things you can own.
“But what I have found with this, okay, so there's Techmeme. Techmeme just automatically pulls headlines based off what's most shared on the internet. And then another example is Let's Run. So let'srun.com, the listener or the owner of let'srun.com is actually a listener of our podcast. And I'm a big fan of let'srun.com. And it's basically the same thing. People submit articles and they comment on it.”
Framework
The front door / side door funnel for selling event tickets
Sam's HustleCon engine: a landing page ('front door') captured emails directly, while 2-3 speaker blog posts a week posted to Hacker News were 'side doors' that funneled readers in. Each blog post he emailed ended with a discounted ticket CTA on a (perpetual) countdown timer.
“what I would do is hustlecon.com was basically a landing page where I explained what the event is and then you'd enter your email and that was called the front door. The side doors were all these blog posts. So I would write 2 to 3 blog posts a week on each speaker. I would post that on Hacker News. People would come to the website via the side door.”
Steal thisRun a landing page as your front door and SEO/community blog posts as side doors, then convert side-door readers into your email list.
Story
Sam's no-audience hit: a Hacker News salary survey that went to #1
With no audience in The Hustle's early months, Sam posted a Google Form titled 'How Much Money Do Founders Make?' to Hacker News, hit #1, and got 300-400 anonymous replies on income, savings, and assets. Hacker News eventually removed it for violating their survey rules, but the anonymized data became hugely popular to both share and read.
“And all I did was I took a Google Form and I posted it on Hacker News. And it went to number 1. They eventually took it down because I think that goes against their terms of service, like have a survey. But I got like 300 or 400 replies and I asked people how much money they have in their checking account, how much they have in their bank account, how much they pay themselves, how much they have in illiquid assets.”
Steal thisBootstrap an audience by collecting and publishing anonymized data people are dying to compare themselves against.
Story
Kickstarter rejected Webflow after a $15K video, so they shipped a Hacker News demo
Webflow recorded a full Kickstarter video begging for support, then learned Kickstarter doesn't allow SaaS — killing the plan and their expected income. Out of money and ready to quit, with a daughter's surgery deductible draining them, they posted a bare demo (playground.webflow.com) to Hacker News, which exploded and got them a 25,000-person waitlist.
“Uh, and that's when we put together like this— it wasn't even an app, it was sort of like a demo. Uh, and you can still see it on playground.webflow.com. And we put it up on Hacker News and that just exploded, which is like really, really surprising because here are all these developers and what we're presenting is a way to— you don't need to be a developer.”
Fact
Dropbox's launch post on Hacker News was trashed as a bad idea
Jack points out Drew Houston announced Dropbox in the Hacker News Show section as a solo founder, and the still-visible comments are full of people calling it a terrible idea they don't need because they have a USB stick.
“Drew Houston, I think when he was a solo founder, announced his Dropbox idea in the Hacker News show section. You can actually still see the post online. This is another bit to bear in mind is if you look on that post now, all of the comments are about how his idea is so terrible and it's definitely going to fail. People are like, "Why do I need this? I've got a USB stick. This is a shit idea."”
Tactic
Curate 'creativity flow' pockets of the internet
Shaan describes maintaining a handful of high-signal internet sources—like the Hacker News Show tab and curated Twitter lists—as 'creativity flow,' where 1 in 10 finds is amazing, instead of defaulting to junk-food feeds like Instagram.
“it's basically like just creativity flow where it's like, I go here and I get inspired one out of every 10 times. I find something amazing and maybe 9 out of 10 times it's just junk, but I need that versus just, you know, otherwise I'll just go on Instagram and then that's sort of like junk food for my brain. And so I have these like little pockets on the internet that like I get cool stuff from.”
Steal thisBuild a short list of high-signal sources (HN Show tab, curated Twitter lists) and treat them as creativity flow, not the algorithmic feed.
Story
Dropbox was called a terrible idea in its Hacker News debut
Jack notes Drew Houston announced Dropbox in the Hacker News Show section as a solo founder, and the still-visible comments mocked the idea, with people insisting a USB stick made it pointless.
“Drew Houston, I think when he was a solo founder, announced his Dropbox idea in the Hacker News show section. You can actually still see the post online. This is another bit to bear in mind is, if you look on that post now, all of the comments are about how his idea is so terrible and it's definitely going to fail. People are like, "Why do I need this? I've got a USB stick. This is a shit idea."”