Ask HN: Somebody beat us to Hacker News. What can we do?

[krantiveer]

We launched https://www.svyft.com a few days ago.

Somebody posted it on Hacker News before we could claim our luck to the front page. Is there something we can do?

This is the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7768926

[minimaxir]

Why does it matter?

As you mention, it's all about luck regardless. In fact, the previous submission was submitted at an optimal time anyways: http://i.imgur.com/BNCjNwK.png

(picture from http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/ )

[krantiveer]

Max, I agree about the luck factor. But new app launches (Show HN) generally get better attention on HN. Dont you think ??

[minimaxir]

Actually, for that article, I had made a score histogram for Show HN articles, and it was near identical to the histogram of normal articles. (i.e. Show HNs don't lead to a significant change in the expected number of points). I had removed it from the post because it was getting long. :P

What you're seeing is confirmation bias. There are many, many Show HN posts made, and very few get upvoted.

[sharemywin]

if your marketing plan was mostly about submitting it to HN you might want to fire your marketing team.