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Moving the needle (gabrielweinberg.com)
48 points by johns on July 3, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 17 comments



Interesting opening paragraphs but this seems like Part 1 to a series of posts.

That's a lot of people and is why early traction verticals like blog posts and non-mainstream press won't get you there. However, you have other options and usually more resources now that you're bigger.

Well, what are the other options? I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all, I sincerely want to learn.


It's thinking behind part of a book chapter we're writing for http://tractionbook.com


Cool, I subscribed to the email list.


This reality is also why viral growth is so powerful: growth % is built in and works somewhat regardless of user base size.

You technically don't need viral growth to have this. You just need sustainable growth[1]

[1] http://www.deviantbits.com/blog/engines-of-growth.html


"take the big tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple. To them, if it is not an x $billion opportunity, it isn't worth expending resources on it." ...? Surely it's worth them spending x $billion - $1 (or some similarly small but less pedantic amount).


The question is not "is this opportunity capable of making a profit at cost X?" but "if BigCorp could spend X on this opportunity, or spend X on a different opportunity, which one (or neither) should they choose?"

Consider the chances of getting a larger share of a different market, the opportunity cost of one investment over another, the possible synergy with other investments, total returns on total investment, and "if we spend X, how much will that move the needle?"


That would be their opportunity cost, which falls under the general umbrella term "cost".


Too abstract, and very fluffy piece. So how is DDG gonna make revenue again?


Agreed. He spends 326 words saying what can be summed up as "when you're small, small changes will be noticeable. When you're large, you'll need to make some larger changes to notice a difference".

Actually, that's not a summary, so much as I challenge anyone to find more value or detailed analysis in the original piece.I read it and thought "what did I learn here?", not to mention how utterly vague it was.


Funny how when Gabriel Weinberg writes something, random anonymous HN commenters get voted to the top of the thread explaining how obvious and superficial the article is.

But when 37signals, which, like Weinberg, actually runs a real business that has to deal with these issues, acts in a way that is entirely consistent with that article, so much so that you have to wonder whether Weinberg's post is literally a response to them! --- the peanut gallery is up in arms about how "no company would ever walk away from 6 figure passive income".


This kinda reminds me of an article Gabriel Weinberg wrote a couple months ago about eliciting emotion: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/05/eliciting-emotio...


What the fuck does this comment have to do with Gabriel's post? Who's voting this comment to the top of the thread?


I wasn't expecting anyone to upvote it, but why does it matter who's upvoting it? You're not God, and can't dictate what others should upvote or downvote.


Case in point: Every time I post my project http://iwaat.com in a relevant HN comment I see a noticeable bump in the analytics graph for that day. Hopefully, I won't be noticing HN comment traffic for very much longer.


What do you use to convert the web pages to images?


http://shrinktheweb.com.

Although I'm looking into switching over to a cheaper solution (http://url2png.com or http://linkpeek.com)





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