How can you predict if your beta software will swim or sink? The factors that contribute to a startup's success are complex and hard to predict. Many developers test the waters by posting their beta versions or newly released products/services on sites like Hacker News, where they can get feedback from a savvy community of potential customers.
Hacker News is a great place to gain exposure and to start a conversation about your business. Posting on Hacker News will often garner positive constructive criticism--but this helpful feedback is often also met with negativity. Many startups place a lot of stock in the reception they get on Hacker News, and archival searches will reveal just how many successful businesses posted there back in their early stages. A bad reception on Hacker News can be incredibly discouraging to developers. But is a specialized community like Hacker News any better at predicting the success of a startup than a more general audience
To investigate this question, Venngage conducted a Hacker News study. They examined 9 original HN threads for businesses that have since become successful (Dropbox, Airbnb, Codeacademy, Instacart, Quora, Meteor, Zenefits,Stripe, Heroku) and one that has since failed (Homejoy). The results may surprise you.
Here is an infographic of the results.