Attention Idea: “I made…”

“I made…”

Hacker News

General

Pat Walls

•

Updated: April 26th, 2025

The Post

Title/Hook: “I made…”
Format: Achievement post
Impressions: 25200
How many followers they had at the time:

Check out the post -> link

Why it works

This one is all about the title. I know the guy who posted it as well and this generated hundreds of thousands in traffic and paying customers on Day 1.

It does a couple things well.

“I made” - that shows your are a real person and people want to get behind you. “Privacy-first” - this perfectly encapsulates the Hacker News audience. They love privacy and they hate Google.

How you can do it:

If your startup idea targets the Hacker News audience, then you should try something like this. If it doesn’t, then think about how maybe one feature could be “Hacker News friendly”. Even if your product is not interesting to the HN audience it’s still worth a shot. Think about this could be done in subreddits or other places your customers hang out. For lack of a better word, pander to your audience.

meet the author

Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

See full profile