chdaniel

Yepyep - but my question is: what's the spiel? What do these companies get "in exchange for" becoming open-source? What's the incentive?

Been following you guys for a bit - loving it!

Suuuuper nice!!

Hey HN,

I'm Daniel Ch: /r/SaaS moderator[1], founder, etc. I'm launching to HN this podcast, "Talk To Your Users": https://anchor.fm/talktoyourusers

I've previously tested an idea on Twitter [2] (in typical 'talk to your users' validation fashion) and on subreddits [3]: live examples of 'Talk to your users'

The feedback seemed interesting, so... I am now launching it!

What's the idea? - I record (with consent) conversations with users. People that are/will/were users of my product. Why?

Situation: One of the top advice bits in the startup/product world is: talk to your users. PG said it multiple times, but double-stressed it by saying: Half the advice I give to startups is some form of "talk to your customers." And then there's The Mom Test: a book about how 'learning if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you'.

Problem: Ok, any practical examples? I mean me listening to founder X talk to user Y. With good and bad examples

My solution: I'm doing this: recording my conversations with users.

What product will I talk about? - The answer is: I don't fully know. I'm as of now building PriceUnlock.com, a tool that helps SaaS founders find&set the perfect pricing for their tool. But maybe due to the conversations, we'll see a pivot. Or two. Or maybe it'll all go well and I'll just 'talk to my users' about future features. Who knows where this takes us? But I'm launching today with 6 episodes.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/saas

[2] https://twitter.com/chddaniel/status/1404484140209082368

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/comments/nzvazj/i...

Oh and if you want even MORE context, I made slightly longer thread here: https://twitter.com/chddaniel/status/1404484140209082368

Help me understand Paul, as I'm a tad bit younger - what's that mid-to-late 2000s writing style? Mind giving some examples?

Upvoted this, great work

As the moderator of /r/SaaS, what can I do to make this rank higher in the list? It seems like the subreddits are not ordered by # of subscribers all the time

Chasing this as I really would love to get in touch!

Hey HN,

Am a bit wary that the community might be against "info-products", but after the somewhat positive reception of my post the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27087688), I thought this might inspire others to:

* Validate at a fast pace

* Trade overthinking for getting something out

* Share their story/ies

It'll probably make some of you wince, the fact that the info product I've validated is "My first 1,000 Twitter followers", but in all honesty, I'm doing by best to be transparent about it: I plan to share what I wish I've heard before starting.

Just bought the book! https://share.getcloudapp.com/Jru4YK1o

Starting to read it.

I don’t really use Twitter, but I’ll put it on my list to reach out in a couple weeks and see if any of this was helpful. I’ll make sure to mention this thread.

Please do! Can I get your contact in any way? Would really hate to let this connection slip

Everything you've advised made sense, though I've got more questions (and curiosity/hunger for knowledge). Despite your precautions that it may not apply to me, some parts do apply really hard.

Especially the bit with "For one, being no BS means you may be neglecting good opportunities to get exposure and business because it feels fake." — this problem has been at the top of my list for the last year, and only now I've started to crack at it, as I started building an audience on Twitter ( went from 190 → almost 1,000 followers in a month).

That said, I'd love to avoid some mistakes and gain some insight from somebody like you who puts it this way

I don't want to push too hard the video call bit for like right now, but at least keep the door open for a moment in the future

what happens when you get a request for an item that you've never seen before?

Just refund and try to make up for the discomfort (money's blocked for the customer for a few days) by offering a voucher — we tell them "we still owe them a perfect experience"

could you write a post on how exactly you became so knowledgeable in telling fakes from authentic items?

Sure! Copying below from another answer

Honestly I just 'hamstered' all the material I could on the most popular items.

In the beginning, in those first 10 guides I mention in the article, I just curated all the splintered bits of info* from the internet into one mega-guide, and added what I found after analysing fakes

* bits of info from as little as a forum thread comment, lost on page 48, to a full-blown attmept at a guide that, to me, wasn't exhaustive enough

In time, it refined to partly what I did in the beginning, and partly our own research which got better with exercise

Package all that info in a free, properly formatted guide (with some imperfect English, I admit, as we're not natives), and that gives us the traffic figures I screenshot'd

Nothing that complicated. And it's not because I haven't explored that option

If anybody reading this is able to create something that can reach 99%+ accuracy in terms of authenticating items, I've (obvious in the post) got the distribution and the audience to sell this to — DMs always open if you've got something solid

Currently it's a fully manual process.

We have competitors claiming they're 'using AI' but it's a bullshit gimmick for the masses of users. Unless an 'AI' is having 99%+ accuracy, it's probably too risky to implement

I'm glad too and grateful for the second chance on the article!

I just have a difficult time seeing how it could be cost-effective, without being eye-wateringly expensive.

We write the guides first, which 'earns' us the 'audacity' to claim we know how to authenticate. I thought of the academic world so as to prove the expertise (I'm the complete opposite of an academic)

* We write public guides (see: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/) - we have about 1m words written on the subject

* People are free to contest it. If we're wrong, we'll correct

* The more other people link to our guides, the more we get... credentials, I guess?

you can't have a fashion purse expert determining whether an "antique" firearm (where forgery is a big problem)

We don't really get that far, into firearms and the such. Currently we do sneakers, clothing, watches, bags and some collectibles (e.g. Pokemon Cards)

I'd assume the biggest value would be to contract with auction houses or appraisers, where the workflow would be familiar

We've worked occasionally with some (e.g. authenticated a pair of $20,000 Jordans: https://legitcheck.app/certificate-of-authenticity/property-...

But mostly B2C, so it's a consumer-focuseed service

But I guess if it's really just sending links to Amazon listings

The products we're authenticating are mostly 'asset products', so items that are $300+, most of the time sold-out, have some resale value over retail OR retain more of their retail value than usual items (think: Chanel items)

There's even more info for them in any of the guides: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/

e.g. for this very item in the screenshot, the guide is: https://legitcheck.app/guides/real-vs-fake-hermes-birkin/

Partly answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090248

Partly answered by someone else here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27089111

You're clearly having some experience, if not lot

Is there any chance I can get your mentorship over a vid call? No commitment for more

The 32-core, 32 GB of memory made sense to me

EDIT: Just to not risk losing this in a not-seen-HN-reply — if yes, let me know where I can reach out, or my Twitter is this: https://twitter.com/chddaniel

OP here.

A pretty fair model if you ask me! I think generally we move more towards that model as the internet progresses

To me, before starting this, it looked like all the ones who made a noticable bump did it this way. It's why we hate Instagram gurus, I'd say

Honestly I just 'hamstered' all the material I could on the most popular items.

In the beginning, in those first 10 guides I mention in the article, I just curated all the splintered bits of info* from the internet into one mega-guide, and added what I found after analysing fakes

* bits of info from as little as a forum thread comment, lost on page 48, to a full-blown attmept at a guide that, to me, wasn't exhaustive enough

In time, it refined to partly what I did in the beginning, and partly our own research which got better with exercise

Package all that info in a free, properly formatted guide (with some imperfect English, I admit, as we're not natives), and that gives us the traffic figures I screenshot'd

/u/not-math put it perfectly in the reply

It's exactly what we aim for!

That's why we never considered charging for our guides, even something as little as $1 → The point was to allow people to inform themselves about fakes, with as little friction as possible

That way, if we bump the % of people who get scammed by even a few negative points, we'd still be happy for a positive contribution

You're defo smart with what you're saying

But the challenge would then be to explain something like this to the average non-techie who's just buying some expensive sneakers because they're cool

Lots of fakes on eBay

They started efforts to curate that, but it's far from cleaning eBay 100%

What you're saying happens, more often than we wish it'd be the case.

That's why we never considered charging for our guides, even something as little as $1 → The point was to allow people to inform themselves about fakes, with as little friction as possible

That way, if we bump the % of people who get scammed by even a few negative points, we'd still be happy for a positive contribution

It's still possible!

It'd help us to open the watch, naturally, but we can still rely on pics. Make no mistake though — the watches can be 99.5% perfect, but (at least for the watches we're handling, which have high values) the compromise in manufacturing processes is spotted one way or another

It's worth pointing out that the discussion about replacing pieces of a fake watch with authentic pieces (making a so-called 'franken' watch, as rep watch connoisseurs call it) is a totally separate discussion

Hey thanks! I was curious to see if handling the topic of luck did vibe with people. Thanks for taking the time to mention this, as it's very valuable to me

It's true that the title was sensationalistic, and I'm the OP. I probably hang too much in the 'build in public' sphere where it's all about the numbers

I mean it'd obviously benefit me more if we kept the old title, but that'd be too much me, and too little for the community

Title got corrected and I'm actually grateful the post wasn't fully taken down (or that I wasn't banned)

EDIT: And thanks for the comment below saying u upvoted!

Do you keep a few clues secret just to be sure?

Not really. We give away everything we have. As others've mentioned, fake manufcaturers get diminishing results by spending the extra $$$ to go from 95% to 99%

Whe anyway, as part of 95%, the exterior side is 99% done. The last 5 bits are interior details unseen by anyone but the wearer

All they care about is selling more products to fake wearers. And fake wearers care only about exterior

Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message

Think: "your order has been shipped"

But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service

What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first

Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items

And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong

Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message

Think: "your order has been shipped"

But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service

What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first

Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items

And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong

Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then

The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message

Think: "your order has been shipped"

But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service

What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first

Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items

And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong

Thanks a bunch ACME Corps! I see you everywhere lol

Nope, we don't check for that. Others might do but that's outside our area of expertise.

We pretty much authenticate what we ourselves have 'earned' the right to authenticate, by covering the item in a free, public guide first: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/

No offense taken! Especially since you're right

We are a scrappy company and we're looking to mature, given the figures we've done the last year. I'd love to know if you'd still have the same opinion after going through our customer workflow

(since yes, what we've discussed is our internal workflow)