[whatnotests]

I never hear about these companies until their shutdown announcement.

Perhaps if they spent more time becoming visible and getting people's attention, things would work out.

[jpallen]

In our defence, this post has had more than twice the attention of our Show HN post! I think there's more drama in something like a shutdown and so it's more 'viral'. Getting people to take interest in a new product is much harder.

(Also, HN is not really a good target audience for us, so if you get news from here, it makes sense you'd see this but not the product itself).

[pavlov]

With thousands and thousands of startups competing for your attention, it's not that easy!

In many markets, there are several well-funded startups that can afford to spend millions on marketing. That makes it even harder to get visibility as a bootstrapper.

[specialist]

I don't think that's fair. We live in an attention economy, where the rare few are good at getting noticed.