HN user

leandot

1,053 karma

I am a software engineer and entrepreneur living in Switzerland, I founded, scaled up and exited 42matters to Similarweb (ticker SMWB). I am also the creator of https://hackernewsbooks.com.

Email: ivdelchev at leandot dot com

Posts45
Comments192
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news.ycombinator.com 1y ago

Ask HN: Recommend a good computer science / programming audiobook?

leandot
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 1y ago

Iced.rs vs. Dioxus for cross-platform GUI in Rust

leandot
11pts3
news.ycombinator.com 1y ago

Math books like Infite Powers or Calculus Made Easy but for other topics?

leandot
13pts10
exercism.org 1y ago

2M users but no money in the bank

leandot
699pts351
prabhatsharma.in 2y ago

Zinc Search

leandot
2pts0
news.ycombinator.com 2y ago

Ask HN: Foundational Books

leandot
2pts10
news.ycombinator.com 4y ago

Ask HN: Data Collection Task for an Internship?

leandot
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 5y ago

Ask HN: What are your favorite paid learning resources?

leandot
2pts2
nim-lang.org 5y ago

Nim in 2020: A Short Recap

leandot
189pts118
michaelfeathers.silvrback.com 6y ago

Functional Code Is Honest Code

leandot
3pts0
www.graphile.org 6y ago

PostgreSQL Schema Design

leandot
187pts41
github.com 6y ago

Slow down specific sites to frustrate yourself out of the dopamine addiction

leandot
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 6y ago

Ask HN: Do you know any frameworks/libraries unique to a programming language?

leandot
1pts2
zwischenzugs.com 6y ago

Goodbye Docker: Purging Is Such Sweet Sorrow

leandot
161pts89
livefreeordichotomize.com 7y ago

Using Awk and R to parse 25tb

leandot
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 7y ago

Ask HN: What competitive advantage you have over others in your field of work?

leandot
1pts1
news.ycombinator.com 7y ago

Ask HN: Which gadget or software has made your daily life better and why?

leandot
2pts1
news.ycombinator.com 7y ago

Ask HN: What are some APIs you wish existed?

leandot
26pts26
streamingpivot.com 8y ago

Show HN: StreamingPivot – pivot and visualize CSV data purely in the browser

leandot
7pts8
news.ycombinator.com 8y ago

Ask HN: Tech books or articles that teach long-lasting concepts?

leandot
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 8y ago

Ask HN: Who wants to learn about Search?

leandot
3pts0
news.ycombinator.com 8y ago

Ask HN: Looking for an API-first CRM, any ideas?

leandot
1pts1
medium.com 8y ago

Cross-Platform C++ Code Design for Mobile Apps

leandot
5pts0
news.ycombinator.com 8y ago

Ask HN: Do you have a website that didn't get accepted by Amazon Affiliates?

leandot
1pts1
news.ycombinator.com 9y ago

Ask HN: What are some examples of useful data only published in pdf?

leandot
3pts1
news.ycombinator.com 9y ago

What are some APIs that fit well together but are from different companies?

leandot
1pts0
hackernewsbooks.com 9y ago

600+ founders shared their favorite books, here the top ones

leandot
4pts0
blog.leandot.com 9y ago

Docker SSH Tunnel

leandot
2pts0
hackerpixels.com 9y ago

Show HN: Hacker News as a feed of videos

leandot
16pts8
news.ycombinator.com 9y ago

Ask HN: Looking for marketing and sales help on a profitable side project

leandot
1pts0

Not sure what you mean by "the modern web", but if it's the ads and popups, I can only recommend NextDNS. It blocks spam, offensive content etc. on dns level. Obviously you have to trust them, but it makes the web usable again to me and my family.

Condolences for your loss. It sounds like a difficult period - give yourself time to mourn. Try to fill the time with meaningful experiences - if you like dogs, go to a dog shelter, if you like hiking, go hiking. A lot of sun, sport and good company helps too. Avoid thinking about the future, work or money right now.

People already mentioned this, but take a base salary at least.

Consider posting your product, maybe someone would have an idea of what to do with it or a company might need exactly certain features, even if your product does not have traction at the moment.

I submitted the article to HN after reading it and I have joined the Exercism Insiders - recurring $10/month, a very fair deal. Hope that has helped a bit!

As someone already mentioned please consider adding ways for monetizing, ads + remove ads, paywall, paid exercises, etc. to stay afloat.

Also please get in touch, email in bio, I don‘t have anything concrete in mind but would like to be in touch. In another life I would gladly be teaching coding, who knows maybe it works out.

Founder life is difficult and grinding, make sure you have an outlet - sport, hobbies, family etc.

Also, hire and empower people to take off some of your work and responsibilities. For many years I didn’t have a proper vacation as I was trying to be always available and this is not the healthy way.

If you can, consider hiring a CEO/COO or get a cofounder.

There is much advice on the web that you should change jobs regularly to get salary raises fast. It is potentially a good advice if you are very good at what you do and your employer is not investing enough to reward you properly. But I’ve seen many cases where a mediocre developer finds a slightly better paying job and your 1+ year investment in training and teaching goes down the drain. Also with LLMs you usually achieve the same as 3-4 juniors.

I am very much pro-training and teaching juniors but there is (was at least) a sense of entitlement and lack of commitment that is detrimental to those efforts.

First of all congrats for creating something and achieving some traction. However, on the valuation side I think the things are a bit different. The size is just too small to justify a higher multiple, because you have to maintain the product, invest in marketing, etc. Until at least 5-6k mrr the buyer would be at a net negative (either hire someone to maintain or do it themselves and in a lot of countries the mrr is enough for neither).

A strategic buyer might buy it for the potential, but also at that size they can likely copy it quickly and with a bit of marketing scale it up.

Are you looking for a web service that does the whole thing? Otherwise asking ChatGPT gives you

convert this free text

  I goto to example.com
  I click the search bar
  I type in “fruit”
  Expect to see a list of fruit
to playwright script

const { chromium } = require('playwright');

(async () => { const browser = await chromium.launch(); const context = await browser.newContext(); const page = await context.newPage();

  // Navigate to example.com
  await page.goto('https://example.com');

  // Click the search bar
  await page.click('input[type="search"]');

  // Type in "fruit"
  await page.type('input[type="search"]', 'fruit');

  // Press Enter to submit the search
  await page.press('input[type="search"]', 'Enter');

  // Wait for the page to load
  await page.waitForLoadState('networkidle');

  // Expect to see a list of fruit
  const fruitList = await page.$$('ul li');
  if (fruitList.length > 0) {
    console.log('List of fruit found!');
  } else {
    console.error('Failed to find the list of fruit.');
  }

  // Close the browser
  await browser.close();
})();

I'd suggest to spend 50% of your time on base marketing - provide meaningful content to your target audience on the web and other channels if they make sense, e.g. LinkedIn for B2B and you will slowly start to get recognized. After that it should get easier. Avoid scammy tactics and spam.

If you really think you need a good non-tech co-founder it should be someone you have worked with under pressure and they have proven that they can deliver. Avoid people that produce strategies.

You should list some things you have built so that someone with marketing/sales experience could find it interesting and get in touch later. It's part of what I called "base" marketing and it's a long game, no shortcuts.

I have been on both sides and if someone doesn’t want to turn on the video and doesn’t want to even try discussing an algorithm in an interview then it is a 100% no go. In the eyes of the interviewer you are uncooperative, likely trying to cheat and they should expect similar conflicts in the future.

If you are good and don’t want to be interviewed then be a freelancer, it might be a better fit if you can somehow prove you are good without interviewing.

I agree that there is typically a "superstar", but it's rarely the ones that believe they are a superstar. Often times the so-called "superstar adds so much abstraction and complexity to a product that it feels only they can deal with it, because the rest of the team can't and does not want to deal with it. Work piles up and moves very slowly and it feels the "superstar" is the only one who does the job. Then superstar burns out, quits and leaves the "mediocre" team to deal with the mess.

For me a "superstar" is a friendly capable coder, who simplifies, teaches and learns in a feedback loop. They are indeed very rare.

That is a very interesting line of thinking, my comment was kind of the opposite - I find that after reading a couple of good books on a certain topic, the rate of learning goes down rapidly compared to the steady amount I get from HN comments and experience. About hackernewsbooks - it's not mine since many years and I am not affiliated with it, I am just the one who built it and sold it. It's still nice though.

You’ve been chosen to be a CTO, this usually means that you either did well in the company or were hired because of a good track record. So keep doing this + keep things simple, plan ahead, learn from colleagues, share knowledge. Stay humble, confess mistakes, ask for genuine feedback and advice.

Books and blogs have a limited anecdotal value (sometimes it is high but the effort is also high). I’ve learned more from individual HN comments and actual work experience and mistakes than any book.