2024-12-09 03:15:47
I discovered 4 patterns in popular Hacker News posts' title:
fun & curiosity, pain points, relate, in-depth technical
Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics
Does “building in public” work? (This is my post 😛)
2024-11-02 12:59:50
从最早的人人网，到后来的知乎和本博客，我在网上写作也有十几年了。今天突然想列个合集，总结一下过往比较有代表性的文章。
我还记得文章是在家里的老 Windows XP 上敲出来的，也记得写到一半进入心流那种热血上的状态。现在回头读，当年高考结束后的意气风发依旧跃然纸上。那些只有高中生才能写出的文字，如今的我肯定是写不出来了。
这是我在人人（当时还叫校内）上发的第一篇日志，还听说语文老师会拿给她后来的学生看，也算是非常特殊的一篇文章。
当年学校把“第四教学楼”改名为“真维斯楼”一事闹得沸沸扬扬。我是激烈的反对派，便写了一篇檄文攻击学校，很快火遍了人人网。现今人人网早已不复存在，而这篇文字我也没办法在网上找到了。
快进到知乎时期，必须要提的就是这个回答了。我可能是第一个把清华恶心的学生互评制度（素测）公之于众的人。今天点开，你仍然能在评论区找到『看着好可怕，吓哭了(;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)”』这样的评论。曝光金字招牌背后的阴暗，这让当年的我无比愉悦。
当年凡是知道我账号的人几乎都会说“嘿我看了你写的那个回答”，还是挺有意思的体验。甚至直到今日，推理协会的新任会长还会问前会长“你知道这篇文章是谁写的吗？”
这篇回答流传并不广，但我很喜欢。对应试教育的声讨少说也有二十年了，然而大多分析根本就是隔靴搔痒，并未直指核心。其实，看透了应试教育，你也就看透了中国——正如这篇回答里写的那样。自然，你不能指望一篇几百字的文章把方方面面都讲透，但理解的人看完肯定理解了。
本博客于 2014 年建立，随后的几年是我文章的高产期，其中的代表便是这篇。本文是我研究生时期的思考和总结，比如你能看到之前文章里的线索汇聚成“出国”的结论。因为写于心智成熟的阶段，文章里的观点我现在依然认同（尽管有了更深刻的认识），因此说它是今天所写也没什么不妥。
当时我是抱着记录个人想法的心态写作的，后来陆续听到有人说本文曾给他们带来启发。相比于学渣回答里的阴湿吐槽，现在的自己有能力带给他人积极的影响，这点还是让人欣慰的。
一个观察，没太多可说的。
放上这篇算是夹带私货，但它确实是我最喜欢的私货了。但如果你玩过《逆转裁判6》，强烈推荐去读一下。
简单来说，我找到了游戏的“隐藏真结局”。写作本文的过程是一场奇妙的体验。从一开始的违和感，到回退存档从游戏里寻找蛛丝马迹，再到最后的抽丝剥茧得出结论，它让我第一次真正在《逆转裁判》里体会到当侦探的乐趣，而不仅仅是随着游戏进程大喊『異議あり！』。
真正的质变，将发生在完整接受了高中编程教育的学生念完本科走出校园的那年，也就是现在六七年以后。那时候，我们将见到一波从高中开始编程，上大学前已经明确志向，又经历了完整计算机科学本科教育的毕业生。这波毕业生的平均素质，将远远超出他们前辈同龄的时候。那时候，不光是转行的人，那些高中省份没有开课导致入门晚，或是大学光注重刷GPA不好好练手的，都将很难在就业市场中找到满意的工作——因为好坑都被更强的人占了。这种因人才涌入导致的竞争压力逐层传递，实际上已经在近几年的CS申请和求职中显现了。最上层的人找不到好坑自然就得去下一层找，下一层的人又得去再下一层，层层传递到最后，自然就要淘汰一批人。当然现在还只是量变，质变要等到前面说的那个时候。
这个预测并没有错，但我当时并未意识到大环境的重要性（i.e. 美联储的低利率）。而且随着各种 15 岁少年搞开源创业被收购的消息出来，实际上这个预测还是保守了——对于有条件和兴趣的孩子来说，他们根本不需要等到高中就已经有大量编程经验了。
一篇反驳 V2EX 老哥抽象发言的文章。
Yihong 曾经把本文放进他的 2019 年度推荐。正如散佚的『真维斯楼』一文所示，十多年前的互联网数据今日已无踪影，而这种数据保存的危机只会随着时间推移而愈发严重。『GitHub 是解决方案』这个结论，随着时间推移似乎也愈发确定了。
写于痛苦的升职失败之后，用血泪总结出的若干职场教训。本文似乎也帮到了不少人。其实我有过写续篇的想法，但鉴于我对传统的大公司升职加薪路径愈发不感冒，也不知道最终会不会写。
今年开始搞独立开发，写了一系列体验文章，比如这篇里记录了我推广 Clicknow 所做的各种尝试。未来应该还会写更多。
我的 HackerNews 巅峰。290 points, 212 comments，最高排名全站第三。写的时候我想过可能会火，但没料到会这么火，可能是正好切中了大家怀疑『build in public』的时代脉络吧（
暂时先这样，以后有新的再加。
2024-09-09 11:14:58
See the discussion on Hacker News. Also check out an app I built:
clicknow.ai, AI-powered search with one click.
Since joining the indie hacker community a few months ago, I've been observing what everyone is doing with great curiosity. One thing I immediately noticed, is that everyone talks about "build in public". In case you're unfamiliar with the term:
(build in public) is an intentional practice of creating content and sharing your company’s story as it unfolds — with transparency, openness and vulnerability.
A common practice of build in public is to share the revenue of your products. I picked a random tweet just to showcase what it looks like:
At first I thought, "OK, everyone is doing it, it must be good". But a few months later, I'm starting to have some questions.
If you follow enough indiehackers like me, Twitter/X will start recommending posts for you. When I said "random tweet", I really meant it: similar posts are all over my timeline, and I literally picked the first one which took less than 5 secs. Based on my observation, out of 10 "build in public" posts, probably 5 or 6 are sharing revenue, mixed with posts like "how I boosted sales 100x in 3 months".
To be clear, I'm not against these posts. If I crossed the 1k milestone, I want to share it with the world too. But the issue is that, it seems people are more willing to post about their achievements, rather than ideas and plans about their products. Maybe it's because the achievement posts attract more attention? I don't know. But if I follow someone because of a product, I'm more interested in the product itself than the person behind it: I want to know what features are being added, what are the long-term plans, etc. Though, It could just be me.
On the other hand, it feels like some of the posts are merely just bragging. Sure, you made 10k, 100k MMR, congratulations. But do you really need to talk about it repeatedly like every day? How does it benefit the customers/followers, what value does it bring? None. It's just clickbait. Once and twice, it's inspiring and eye-opening, but more times, it just gets boring.
Ten years ago, when @levelsio was still a nobody, "build in public" was a brand new thing. You see, when everyone still followed the traditional route of build -> launch (mostly as a one-off effort), suddenly there's this guy who started sharing everything in a way that no one had seen before: what he was building, what worked and what did not, how much he made, etc. This naturally gained him a lot of attention and made him famous (ofc, along with good products).
Back in the days, "indiehacking" was also new, with few people doing it. Nowadays, things are completely different. The "Build in Public" community on Twitter has 33.3k members, r/indiehackers has 20k members, and indiehackers.com has 100K subscribers. The field of indiehacker is no longer a deserted square at midnight, it's now flooded with people: young students who dropped out of college, people who quit their 9-5 jobs to peruse a bigger dream, and people who get laid off and decided to never do it again. As Google trends shows, before Oct 2016, there were little searches of "indiehacker" or "indie hacker". Look at what it is today.
You might have guessed what I'm want to say:
When everyone builds in public, no one builds in public.
Let's admit it, the main purpose of build in public is to attract attention and build a community, so you can keep selling products. But when everyone is doing so (and some doing it exceptionally well), how much attention can you get?
It's weird to say this, but let's not forget that it's still the product that ultimately matters. Many successful indiehackers and solopreneurs don't build in public, or at least not in the popular way. Nick Moore (who built PopClip) tweets very little, and posted to the user forum only when there's a big update. Danny Lin (who built OrbStack) never shared its revenue, and only tweets occasionally. They build some of the best softwares that ever existed, and they don't build in public. All I'm trying to say is, build in public may be good and work for some, but it's not the only way, and you (as an indiehacker) should not feel any pressure for not doing it.
I'm still new and exploring. I wrote about my questions, but I don't believe I have an answer for them. If you'd like to discuss more on this topic, I'm on Twitter/X and Mastodon.
2024-08-30 17:09:47
如果采访十个独立开发者：“你觉得独立开发最难的地方在哪？”，估计有九个人都会说是 marketing/市场推广。最近开始做 Clicknow (之前叫 "Xylect"），我对此才真正有了体感。这里记录一下我的各种尝试，或许能帮到一些人（尽管我做的也不好😭）。
作为背景，《Clicknow - 让你的工作和学习效率翻倍》 一文介绍了该产品的功能。
因为自己有个播客，所以我先在听友群里推广了一下，卖掉了几份。几位朋友提供了不少反馈建议，在此特别感谢。
我过去曾在 Reddit 和 Hacker News 推广开源项目，Reddit 的反馈总是很积极，因此我选择它作为在英文世界推广的第一站。
I made an app to help you automate boring tasks with one click
这是我在 r/macapps 版发的贴，效果还行，卖出了将近十份，并且获得了一些很有价值的反馈。比如很多人提到了和 PopClip 的兼容性，网站缺乏用户指引等问题，这些我都在后续做了改进。应一位意大利的老哥要求，我让app 支持了意大利语界面和输出。
同时，我还收到了一位法国人的邮件，这里先按下不表，后面还会提到。
受到了第一个帖子的鼓舞，我去了更多的板块发帖，包括 r/SideProject, r/Entrepreneur, r/indiehackers。
因为这些板块命令禁止 self-promotion，所以我不得不用“软文”的方式去宣传，这就是博客的前一篇文章：
《The unexpected emotional cost of being an indiehacker》
说是软文，但确实是有感而发写的。我抱着就算卖不掉起码能得到一些回应的心态发帖，但现实很快就给我上了一课。三篇帖子总共只有三个评论，并且其中两个在抱怨博客在移动端下字体太小。自然，我也没有卖出任何一份 app。
作为英文世界的两大头部论坛，我肯定也要去 Hacker News 发帖。我并未抱有希望，毕竟以往 Hacker News 的反馈就不好，感觉 HN 发帖非常讲究运气和技巧。结果不出所料，没有评论，也没有卖掉 app。也许之后会再尝试一下。
如果有兴趣，可以去看一下我过往发的帖子。
有这么一类网站，姑且叫它们工具站。它的模式很简单：你提交 app/SaaS 的链接，它展示。
我提交了几个，毕竟免费的外链谁不要呢？然而我很快就被坑了。
事情是这样的。我在 Reddit 看到一个帖子，说自己的网站上线几天就赚了不少。点进一看，原来是个工具站，并且每次提交要收 $19。当时我看到页面上已经列了一些 app，但还不多。本着早提交早曝光的原则，我就交了 $19，把 Clicknow 列上去了。结果就是我损失了 $19 🥲
从中我学到了一课：工具站无法帮你卖掉产品，它们的价值只是提供一个外链。当然，那种合作推广的或许有用，不过我没经历过就不评价了。
经历了英文世界的失败，我又想着来中文世界推广一下，首选自然是 V2EX。如果说哪次失败最让我始料未及，那毫无疑问是 V2EX。这是我的帖子：
我浏览了一些 V 站过往的推广贴，感觉互动量还行，帖子写得好点应该有不少流量，再怎么说 V2EX 也是国内的 HN + Reddit 对吧。
我在美国时间晚上发完帖就满怀期待地去睡觉了，心想等第二天醒了再回复评论。
第二天打开一看，唯一的回复是 Kilerd 从听友群过来支持的。我傻眼了，完全不能理解发生了什么。又读了一遍帖子，我还是觉得产品描述没问题，唯一的问题可能出在没有送码。一瞬间，我想起了什么。我赶紧去翻之前看的那些推广贴，果不其然，凡是热门的帖子基本都是送码的，并且 70% 以上的评论是一个 base64 邮箱。。
至此，我完全理解了 V2EX 的逻辑。于是我赶紧在主帖里补上一段，说正在开发免费试用（之前是没有的），如果感兴趣可以留邮箱。果然逐渐有了求码的回复，甚至数天之后仍然持续——这验证了我之前的猜想。
我快马加鞭把免费试用加上了，在帖子里@了之前求码的用户。自那以后，帖子就再也没有收到过评论，也没有卖掉任何一份 app 🫠
至此，最近的几次推广可以说是惨不忍睹，全军覆没。从之前那个销售数据图里也能看到，中间有很长一段空白。
然而我始终抱有一线希望，原因来自一个法国人。
之前提到，在 r/macapps 推广之后，有个法国人给我发了封邮件。他说自己有一个 newsletter 叫做 vvmac，希望 app 能支持法语并送他一份 license，如果他用的好就会在 newsletter 里推荐。这种机会我当然不会放过，于是我硬着头皮靠 Claude 加上了法语支持，跟他说了。
我没想到老哥如此热心和细致，不愧是做 Mac app 评测的。从我们的第一封邮件开始，他反馈了无数问题，翻译、交互、UI、bug、feature，很多是我之前没想到的。他回邮件极快，有时我说一个 bug 修好了，他五分钟之后就回复说的确好了。我们来回一共发了六十多封邮件，直到最后他发出那份推荐了 Clicknow 的 newsletter。
我不知道该如何形容这种感觉，大概是惊讶混合着感激吧。我没见过这样的用户，可能以后也不会再有。他让 Clicknow 从一个满是 bug 的产品变成如今成熟的样子，我将永远感激他。
Newsletter 发出后，app 也陆续卖掉了几份。当然，这些都不重要了。
在开始做产品之前我就明白，一个产品想要大火，归根到底还是要靠网红去推广。在法国老哥联系我之后，我在页面上加了说明，给愿意合作的内容创作者免费 license。
之后有一个人联系了我，我给了 TA 一份 license
Hey, I'll be honest, I am not a huge content creator but I think I put a lot of effort in evaluating and figuring out which apps work, how they work for me, and writing about it as cleanly and still being as descriptive and as thorough as possible... So I was wondering if I could get a license in case you are willing to share it. Thank you for considering. Have a great weekend.
大网红不可能自己找上门，于是我决定主动出击。现在 app 已经有法语支持，因此我打算另辟蹊径看能否开拓一下法国市场。我给几个法语区做 Mac 视频的 YouTuber 发了邮件，主打一个为法语使用者提供无缝英语阅读体验。
若干天后，我收到唯一一封回件。如同一桶冰水，彻底浇灭了我找网红推广的念头：
Hi, Thank you for your proposal.
I can help you to promote your service on Tiktok, Instagram et YouTube, with unique short video. Price for this project is 3500€.
除非我真的疯了，才会花 3500 欧元找人推广。当然我也必须要说，凭这位 YouTuber 的 follower 数量（YouTube: 348K, TikTok: 2.7M, Instagram: 400K），这个报价的确不算离谱，甚至我毫不怀疑这个推广能给某些产品带来极大收益。只是，Clicknow 确实不属于它们。
我也给某小红书博主发了邮件，人家说不感兴趣，只能作罢。
读到这里可能大家也看出来了，这不是一篇成功经验分享，因为我完全没找到推广的门路。曾经我天真地以为，我既然能做成开源项目，那自然也能搞定独立开发。事实证明这种想法是大错特错。正如我在上一篇文章写的，开源项目永远是用户欠开发者，因为用户享用的是开发者的无偿劳动。而对独立开发（或者说所有的商业行为）而言，这种立场就完全逆转了。
这种经验虽然惨痛，但也在意料之中，并且是我所期望的。作为独立开发的第一款产品，我给自己设置的目标就是尽可能探索整个流程，并从中学习。能赚钱自然好，但并不是最重要的。
最后，感谢你读到这里。如果希望体验一下 Clicknow，可以前往官网下载免费试用。App 的功能并非本文重点，也就不多介绍了，可以看前几天刚录的视频 和这篇文章《Clicknow - 让你的工作和学习效率翻倍》。
2024-08-17 02:59:04
Earlier this year, I started building my first commercial Mac app as an indiehacker. Previously, I was mainly focused on open source and was doing decent (2 projects with >1k stars, 2.2k followers on GitHub).
Open-source and entrepreneurship share many similarities, like ideation, execution, and all the tech stuff. I thought marketing was the major difference (of course). But I didn't realize that there's something bigger: the emotional cost.
Being the maintainer of an open-source project, you decide what you want to build, whom you build it for, and, most importantly, you don't owe your users; they owe you. Even if it goes viral and has thousands of users, there's no moral obligation that you have to do anything for them.
- "Have bugs? Sure, PR welcome"
- "Want this feature? Nah, it's not planned, find something else or make a PR yourself"
This is common in the open-source world, and is considered normal for good reasons; otherwise, the maintainers would soon burn out. But in entrepreneurship, things are completely different. Now, you owe your users because they paid for something you built.
I had a customer with whom we exchanged over forty emails back and forth, and still counting (which I do really appreciate!). Each time he reported a subtle issue, I felt I had failed his expectations, so I apologized to him and tried my best to fix it quickly. It's probably not the right reaction, but I don't know what is.
Other customers would request for more features. For those that align with my vision, even slightly, I always add them. For those that don't, I'd explain to them what the current plan is, why it does not fit, but still give them hope that this may be added in the future. Now, when someone messages me or a new email pops up, I'm like "oh no, there's something wrong". I need to calm myself down before I open the message.
Overall, it just feels so different. I know I might get used to it over time, but want to share the experience in case people have the same feelings or find it interesting.
