Hacker News Startups: Listing/Wiki of startups founded by HNers (not just YC)

by markbao • 17 years ago

205 46 17 years ago

markbao7• 17 years ago

Hi! A bit of time ago, a guy asked for a listing of everyone's startup on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=568951

So here it is! On Sunday I spent a few hours hacking together a wiki thing in Rails from scratch. A few things that need to be fixed, but otherwise, hope it's useful for you.

* Not restricted to YC. Any HN people can submit/edit.

(this comment used to be about how our VPS exploded and started OOMing.)

wensing2• 17 years ago

So if the 'Add Startup' button isn't responding should I just hit refresh over and over again? ;)

davidw3• 17 years ago

Wow... what wiki and VPS and settings? That's pretty bad.

markbao7• 17 years ago

I built the wiki from scratch.

There was a rogue ruby script that was running for no apparent reason, taking up all the server resources.

dbul• 17 years ago

Nice work. I'm glad to see someone went ahead with it.

It would still make the front page of the site interesting to eventually tie it to karma.

jgilliam• 17 years ago

This will be very useful. Thanks for setting it up.

wensing2• 17 years ago

Don't send the like link to # -- it jumps you to the top of the page and you lose your place.

markbao7• 17 years ago

Thanks! Fixed.

matthias• 17 years ago

Very useful. Could you add a field for input of HN threads pertaining to each startup?

markbao7• 17 years ago

I added "hnsearch" link to each listing that executes a SearchYC query on the startup name.

falsestprophet2• 17 years ago

The design is very elegant. Congratulations on a job well done. And thanks for this contribution to the community.

pxlpshr• 17 years ago

Definitely agree, hope you continue expanding on this... overtime it would be cool to have a section based on stats and performance, perhaps associated to a few metrics like link-backs in google, press on blogs, tweets, etc.

falsestprophet2• 17 years ago

And one day: market capitalization

streety2• 17 years ago

It might just be me but I didn't realise that clicking on the like link was a vote for that startup. An up arrow or a plus sign might be more clear.

knightinblue• 17 years ago

But the 'like' tag has numbers in parentheses. People should be immediately able to see that it's a kind of voting.

Now if there was a like/dislike system in play, well that's different.

streety2• 17 years ago

'People' are stupid. Sorry if I/we disappoint.

hwork• 17 years ago

If you want to slurp in some more data about the companies already in there, you can use the CrunchBase API: http://groups.google.com/group/crunchbase-api.

mapwow• 17 years ago

don't forget the CSRF/XSRF protection... http://hnstartups.com/startup/64/like

Raphael• 17 years ago

Damn it. Don't click this link unless you want to vote for his startup! Or vote for mine. http://hnstartups.com/startup/100/like

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

Map WoW is already #2 due to your little stunt :) ... but it's much worse than that...

  while true; do
    curl http://hnstartups.com/startup/X/like
  done

I suggest you fix both the CRSF and multiple voting, and reset the "like" counts :)

gojomo3• 17 years ago

Nicely done!

Ideas in no particular order: Have a master index page, with just startup names, for seeing overall size of wiki and one-click navigation to any one page. Offer browsing to the ordered list starting at letters other than 'A'. Make URLs guessable (and thus also SEO-friendly). Improve disclaimer that it's any HN user startup, not officially YC-related -- there's a small risk of confusion, better to be ahead of it.

markbao7• 17 years ago

Great ideas, Gordon.

Master index page is an interesting idea. Not sure about how useful it might be, since there's already search, but I'll do that soon. Edit: done.

The alphabetical list is ordered with pagination — do you mean have links A B C, etc. to jump?

Guessable/pretty URLs are on my list. Just didn't get around to it :) and I tried to have a decent nonobstructing disclaimer on the side, but maybe it needs a bit of a boost :)

Cheers and thanks! Mark

gojomo3• 17 years ago

A master name index would let viewers sense the size of the set moreso than a reported number; see patterns in names; discover interesting names they wouldn't know to search for (and might not page 'next, next, next' to find). Such a view could also grow into a 'dynamic screener' -- one click to filter view by 'official YC', geo-location, launched-yet, etc.

Yes -- I meant quick-jumps to letters. But that is really only interesting as a way to randomly browse without blind-jumps into the page numbers.

Again, nice job!

diN0bot• 17 years ago

i can't submit a comment on the HNers page. i don't use disqus. i keep getting an alert about "username must contain 3 characters" even though i've typed my full diN0bot username.

adrianwaj4• 17 years ago

Can you have: for sale, an optional price, when it was launched, current number of employees/people

Ideally there would be some verification if such data was added, whereby the user would need to link to HNStartups from their profile and also their site.

dhimes• 17 years ago

Maybe grab it from a pad-like file on the site- so users can update.

vaksel• 17 years ago

I think it'll look much better if you have everything on a single page, and make it more condensed:

i.e. something like <<<Name + link to site>>> [HNusernamelink] [HNSearch] [[[DESCRIPTION]]]]

jack7890• 17 years ago

Beautifully done. Simple, elegant, and highly useful website.

rrival• 17 years ago

Not that it applies to me but what about TechStars / etc colored indicators?

davidw3• 17 years ago

Another place you can list your startup: your profile page on HN. Way too many people leave that empty, with no URL, no contact information, "no nothin'".

webwright• 17 years ago

Nice work. Would love a location field. Use case: I live in Seattle. I would be interested to see other HN startups in Seattle. It'd also be academically interesting to see distribution.

jonallanharper• 17 years ago

Good call. Location would be excellent.

adrianwaj4• 17 years ago

I'd like to see an RSS feed at some point, would be great.

adrianwaj4• 17 years ago

The site can be SPAMMed. It's good start though. I could claim Google as my startup, and someone could claim mine under anyone's username.

adrianwaj4• 17 years ago

Also, you could setup a new HN username and post to the site in the same minute.

netsp• 17 years ago

How do you keep this a Listing/Wiki of HN startups as opposed to a Listing/Wiki of hnstartups?

JeffL• 17 years ago

Nice, but adding a startup doesn't work in Chrome. =)

showerst• 17 years ago

You may want to add rel="nofollow" to your outgoing links, just to discourage people from spamming it for a free link.

BerislavLopac• 17 years ago

This one is my favorite: http://hnstartups.com/startup/239 :)

jamroom• 17 years ago

We've been in business for 6 years - can I still be a "startup"?

vorador• 17 years ago

Btw, why all of those startups are web sites ?

Ain't there anybody who sells desktop applications ?

Hacker News Startups: Listing/Wiki of startups founded by HNers (not just YC)

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