YHK - yet another hacker news clone

6 points nandakishor_ml 1 hour ago 15 comments

I am running a small AI company that has been building an offline security audit app, simply a fine-tuned small language model powering an Electron app that can audit GitHub and local code repos for security stuff. I always see these LinkedIn or X guys making $500k ARR or $1m ARR within months; how the fkk do they get that many customers without spending on ads? I can't even get 5 customers; damn it, I do suck at sales

toomuchtodo 1 hour ago | parent

How do you know they’re not lying? Words are free.

nandakishor_ml 59 minutes ago | parent

thats true, but many are genuine btw

nandakishor_ml 1 hour ago | parent

Is it because I live in a remote place in India and don't have connections to SF companies, like they have companies in the backyard that raised 100 million and can easily make money? This stuff has been bothering me for years!! What am I missing?

bix6 11 minutes ago | parent

that’s certainly part of it. Your network access matters.

nandakishor_ml 2 minutes ago | parent

but some people dont have office make shit ton of money from ai slop saas? genuinely frustrated by all the effort I put and no outcome

tmpz22 21 minutes ago | parent

They cannibalize their social group. For example, they will make a lot of immediate small deals with other people in their cohort, incubator, or investor circle, and then use these deals to get to their next round of investment. Functionally those early sales are just there for signal.

That or they just lie on socials.

tmpz22 16 minutes ago | parent

Further, if you "cheat" your first tranche of sales you're potentially burying a valuable negative feedback loop for your product and sales development. The real hurdle, afaik, is mid-market and enterprise sales which is a big jump from getting your buddy to sign a small one year contract.

moezd 21 minutes ago | parent

To my estimation, you are in B2B, competing with the likes of Wiz. Those with $500k ARR are usually "ad forwarding" or "networking" companies. Think about how you distribute your software, that's probably more important than your current features.

respectattentio 19 minutes ago | parent

How much you want? $1M? $10M?

I could easily give you that title. Or maybe you can even do that yourself.

Lots of new companies are either faked, or amplified.

Example: If I made a sale of $100 this hour, it can become $864K ARR, with amplification (100 x 24 x 30 x 12).

What to do? Focus on your job and forget everybody else. Don't ever judge progress by revenue alone. A low revenue company who invents something in energy could be worth all companies exist today. But you never hear about it, because it is the real stuff.

namanyayg 17 minutes ago | parent

You need to set up a methodical go-to-market process.

You can automate some of it, but it's good to start manually and learn the ropes first.

You need to understand who your ideal customer is and what channels are they on.

Linkedin is a common one for b2b sales.

If you make 200 connections on linkedin every week and send them a message, some % of that will convert to meetings and sales (the exact % depends on your audience, message, and how urgent the pain you're solving is)

It is extremely hard at start, especially for engineer types (like myself)

Fortunately, it's a skill like any other that can be learned.

Read this article for more info https://x.com/namanyayg/status/2097783972302557668?s=46

bix6 14 minutes ago | parent

Please don’t send me messages on LinkedIn. The spam is unbearable.

prettyblocks 13 minutes ago | parent

As someone who gets a ton of these inbounds every day, I report every single one of them as spam.

nandakishor_ml 4 minutes ago | parent

I teach AI and have around 18k Instagram followers and about 9k on LinkedIn. Do I need to connect with Instagram influencers for a collab? Is it a good way?, just curious. Btw linkedin cold message gives conversion?

kaydub 16 minutes ago | parent

You get sales first. Then you build the thing.