[tyingq]

>Yeah, I think it is an unfair characterization

Perhaps. However, many people here walked away with that impression...mostly from looking at your site.

I think it's highly likely this isn't just HN, and first impressions count. I would do a focus group or similar[1], and make sure your site is conveying the message you want.

[1] https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/how

[kwgardner]

You're right. We're learning that we need to probably revisit some of how we present ourselves. To be fair, though, we did do some extensive user testing through several different methods. And interestingly, people generally always liked our site and us better, thought we were more trustworthy, and were more likely to try it when there were lots of friendly dinos and colors on the page than when it was a more traditional "professional" site. Of course, not everyone did, and the HN demographic probably falls into that not everyone, but we can't appeal to everyone no matter what we do, so we went with what made us happy and what our research said had the largest reach. There are still lots of areas for us to improve (this is the first people have really been seeing our site with no context, and the first press we have gotten, so we're learning), but that's why we went the way we did.