Alternatives
Products that do what What popular startup sites looked like when they launched does
Hi HN, I’m super excited to share my weekend project here and I really hope you find it inspirational and useful. I've spent most of Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK (Memorial day weekend for those in the US) going through Wayback machine and Web archive to create a timeline of how popular startup websites have evolved over time since their launch. As the (now) famous quote from Reid Hoffman goes: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you have launched too late." Hope this helps inspire more founders to just get out their and start building. I'm going to…
- 1

- 2IL
Please check it out. I spent all of 2012 learning to code to launch what would eventually become Uncover. I'm super excited to announce that we're finally live. Here's a blog post I wrote on how we got there and a little story behind the startup: http://spencerfry.com/introducing-uncover
2013 · uncover.com
- 3

- 44S
I scraped more than 400 urls that were listed as supposed good places to launch a startup. I checked out each one, and found a lot of neglected sites, domains for sale, sites asking a lot of money to list your startup, etc. I made notes about my experience with each. I think this could be useful to other startups.
2023 · launchpointzero.com
- 5NB
www.nearbybuzz.com Today i'm launching my startup after more then a year of development. I quit my job last year to make web and mobile apps and Nearby Buzz is my first big project. Love to get some feedback and see what you guys think!
2015
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- 7AD
Hey HN, I've been working on a little side project and could really use your feedback. So, I've always been fascinated by those stories of successful startups doing crazy things in their early days - you know, like Airbnb founders personally photographing listings or DoorDash founders delivering food themselves. I started collecting these stories, and before I knew it, I had a pretty big list. So I thought, "Why not turn this into a website?" And that's how https://dothingsthatdontscale.org was born. It's super basic right now - just a simple directory with about 70 examples. But…
2024 · dothingsthatdontscale.org
- 8HN
Friends, Romans, HNers! Link: http://hackerbyte.com This is my first “weekend project” and it was really fun doing it. The sleepless weekends nights when all my friends were our partying or something we (me and two friends) were busy creating ‘hackerByte’ - a weekly newsletter to share inspiration with start-up people. Nothing fancy - just we’d like to share some really nice stuff we read and some news with you, every week. We know that newsletters like these already exist so why one more? Because we are not really satisfied with what they are doing and here is our version of the wheel. We…
2011
- 9SL
So a while ago I was thinking it would be neat to build a site that had the most absolute utility. The idea I came up with was a site to store those little protips that are super useful, if you know them ahead of time. I hired a guy to work on it with me, and ClueDB was born: http://cluedb.com/ Please give it a whirl (it uses Twitter auth as login but doesn't tweet anything) and tell me what you think! (Various trivia: My first try at a project coded by someone else and "product managed" by me. Runs on Flask + MongoDB. Also, this is totally unrelated to my startup.)
2011
- 10FA
I'm a Computer Science student who loves creating things. Even though university is tough, I always make time for personal projects. Yesterday, I launched my first website that aims to help startup founders find their ideal team members and, at the same time, assist individuals in joining projects that align with their skills and interests. There are also a ranking of the most popular startups and some filters you can use to search what you are looking fot
2025 · stupconnect.com
- 11OS
We did a "Show HN post" 6 months back of our startup and we're very excited to show everyone how far we've come as well as the lessons we've learnt so far! It's been a roller-coaster so far and we think there's lot more of the same to come! We did apply for Ycombinator funding but got turned down :( But may re-apply soon :) For those that don't know, our startup is called Scirra and we make Construct 2 which is an HTML5 game engine (http://www.scirra.com). Our engine allows anyone to make HTML5 games without knowing any programming. It's only me and my brother working on this and we're based…
2012
- 12LS
We built this using investor tools. I really wanted to know which startups to work for. Are we on the right track? PS - there's a paywall but if you want to explore more, just DM me your email and I'll give you free access in our db!
2023 · usemassive.com
- 13TS
I'm a Computer Science student who loves creating things. Even though university is tough, I always make time for personal projects. Yesterday, I launched my first website that aims to help startup founders find their ideal team members and, at the same time, assist individuals in joining projects that align with their skills and interests. There are also a ranking of the most popular startups and some filters you can use to search what you are looking fot
2025 · stupconnect.com
- 14UI
We built this database using the same software investors use to discover startups. My friends and I really wanted to know which startups to work for. Are we on the right track? PS - there's a paywall but if you want to explore more, just DM me your email and I'll send you a free access code! Thank you so much.
2023 · usemassive.com
- 15CLCraft.ly▲10
We hatched this idea of a Kickstarter + Groupon + Etsy model last week, threw up a super simple landing page that day, then launched a more detailed landing page last night. What do you think of the idea as a whole? The landing page itself? Since the Etsy / crafting world is so large and diverse, we're really trying to focus on the sharing of our site to get the word out. We are doing some minimal google ads and will be doing various tests to see what brings in the best traffic and converts the best. Interestingly enough, good old fashioned twitter searching with hand authored tweets has had…
2011 · craft.ly
- 16WA
Here is something I made for fun, after getting annoyed by hearing numerous ideas proposed by various people. http://www.kidura.com/front_pages/misc_fun/
2013
- 17SL
Hello Hackernews! I've been building startups for 3 years and finding my initial customers has always been a big struggle. I recently got into the "build in public" trend and love how it helps founders like us get noticed without big connections. I saw many of us sharing our ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) on IndieHackers, Twitter, and other places. But there wasn't a simple place to see how we're all doing compared to each other. So, I built StartupLeaderboard.com, a site where we can see each other's ARR and learn from it. It's straightforward: you share your ARR, see others, and we all get…
2023 · startupleaderboard.com
- 18BF
Excited to announce my new project, Rally! It’s a useful community for early-stage startup founders, inspired by Y Combinator’s Bookface. Site: https://rally.socap.ai/ We think many problems that founders have can be solved 10x better through other founders, but there’s no tool/place to do that well and at scale. For example, instead of googling how to launch on PH, reading blog posts, etc., you could ask for an intro to a famous hunter who’ll explain all that and hunt your product. We're building this place + software to make it work really well. What Rally is: • A…
2024 · rally.socap.ai
- 19WD
Hey everyone! We spent the major part of the year preparing an idea we had for the YC application. At last minute, we decided not to go through with YC. I mean, we've had our fair shares of failed startups and this was one of those make it or break it scenarios. We took everything we've ever learned and strived to make an app that we were proud of. We spent so much effort into making this app that we couldn't bear stopping short and applying to Y Combinator. (Mind you, there's nothing wrong with YC.) We didn't want to apply to Y Combinator at the last minute because if we had really gone…
2012
- 20IV
Hey my name is Ivo and I'm a developer and a startup entusiast. My girlfriend was out of the coutry for the weekend and I decided to do something cool like building a startup. I've done a few startups over the years but that's the first I actually released, I would love to hear your feedback on it.
2024 · craftlynow.com
- 21WS
Hi HN, We are building a search engine to help founders, investors, and early adopters to easily discover startups from all over the world. Discovering startups - whether it is a potential competitor, to validate an idea or as part of a DD process - is a difficult and time-consuming process. We believe that many existing platforms require expensive subscriptions and general-purpose search engines often do not give a complete enough picture. To solve this problem, we are releasing a free-to-use search engine (with a relatively generous daily limit on search volume). No sign-up is required. We…
2023 · symonda.com
- 22IM
Hey HN, I'm Aydin, a 13-year-old developer and indie maker looking to improve the world with my small startups. Recently, I built 2 micro SaaS projects. I spent days & weeks coding features, always telling myself that after coding one more feature I was for sure to get traction. This never happened. The reason: I never launched. With IndieReq, you can launch your startup fast and get real user feedback so you know exactly what features to ship and improve. All you have to do is sign up for free, create a feedback board, and share the public link with your users. It's that easy! If you've…
2025 · indiereq.com
- 23SO
Hey HN, I built a new platform called Indie Logs to help founders share their journey in a clear and organized way. Building in public is common now, but it's hard to stand out and share everything properly on places like Twitter. Your updates can get lost, and it's not easy to show the full picture of your good and tough days. There is no real way to present the full story. I built Indie Logs because I saw these problems. It gives you a personal page for all your projects, lets you put updates on your own site with embeddable timelines, and offers over 30 themes to personalize both your…
2024
- 24IL
Hi HN, I noticed a lot of people have trouble finding the right .com name for their startup or project and I want to help. I just launched NameMage.com and want to help you find a great available .com name for your startup or you pay nothing. No strings attached. Just let me know a little about your project and what you're looking for and I'll do the rest. To get started, visit http://www.NameMage.com Also, any feedback is appreciated. Hope I Can Help!
2012
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