The reason certain users or companies 'break through' to me on HN (i.e. achieve a long term identity in my brain) is because they change my model of how the world works.

Two examples -- Posterous and Mixergy. Mixergy has gotten lots of visibility on HN lately, Posterous maybe not quite as much (though maybe I just haven't paid as much attention to Posterous lately). But both changed my model of the world in some way. Posterous, for making me think more about email as the least-common-denominator social network publishing platform, and the value of tapping into that, and the technical issues involved with doing so; Mixergy, for the content of the interviews, but also for the format -- I think a Mixergy-style site on ambitious young neuroscientists could be really interesting, and good for my field as a whole.

Posterous and Mixergy changed how I think about things, and because of that, I'll probably remember both for as long as I live.

This is a different model of brand awareness from the one that is implicit in the poll results linked to here -- that brand awareness is some function of the number of times a brand gets posted per unit time and the popularity of the post. For me, that's just visibility -- but stickyness comes down to, "Did this change my model of the world?"

And that's the value I get from the better posts on HN, the better New Yorker articles, etc.

Shafqat here from NewsCred, one of the startups included in the poll. Interesting results - I'm not surprised only 8% had heard of us. Our consumer site (www.newscred.com) has gotten decent traction and press, but nothing out of this world.

Our main business (http://platform.newscred.com) has no publicity or marketing attached to it. We've just been heads down, working away on the product and iterating with customers using typical customer development strategies. With that said, it's a sizeable business and growing. And some stage, we need to turn the marketing machine on.

But the real question I debate internally is "how important is brand recognition." Obviously it's priceless for the Cokes or Nikes of the world. But for a startup that has a clear path to customer acquisition, has figured out its ARPU and is having success with sales, how much focus should be spent on 'brand-building?'

Thoughts?

The point of having a business is making money, and if having brand awareness on Hacker News doesn't make you money, why bother? For a company like Directed Edge, though, having brand awareness on HN can bring in a ton of money, since developers on Hacker News will read about them, check them out, and sign up as paying customers.

Just depends on the business.

I think there are very few companies where recognition on HN could possibly matter. For me there is (afaik) only one user on HN who might be interested in my little startup.

Long term I think it's imperative though, the personal interactions and feedback and direct relationships I've been building with my clients does not scale so well to a wider audience.

I'm not sure that the brand awareness of these cases is related to the company naming. For example, I think Bingo Card Creator is well-known mostly because everyone here loves patio11.

I think in part it's the... well, "absurdity" (?) of bingo cards, of all things, being successful. Something like wheels' Directed Edge is very cool technology and sort of the classic hacker startup. Bingo cards, on the other hand, just seems like this left-field thing, so it sticks in your head a bit more, paradoxically. When you read about something like DE, you kind of nod your head and say yeah, that's pretty cool, and admire it. When you read 'bingo cards' for the first time the reaction is more like "say what?!".

Not to take anything away from patio11 of course - he's a bright guy and always full of good advice. It's just that he sticks out more by not fitting the mold.

It's interested that you look at it this way because I don't. I've always looked for product ideas like his that can bring in some nice cash but aren't going to make you rich. They are everywhere.

Before the wife, kids and mortgage show up, this seems to me to be the way to do it. Don't shoot for the fences. Look for the ideas that can get you enough cash in your pocket to move on to the next idea where you can shoot for the fences. You'll have the stability of the first income and the experience it brought.

(Hopefully this doesn't seem like I'm taking away from what Patrick has done but I think it's clear that this idea isn't making him a millionaire.)

I'm still getting over the shock of being a tens-of-thousandsaire, believe me. There is nothing like being in business as a training tool for being in business, though. I don't think there is any grad school which will teach you, e.g., how to run an AdWords campaign or how to think about SEO, but these are fairly generalizable skills that I get to keep even if catastrophe strikes the teaching bingo market tomorrow.

Plus, as opposed to grad schools, businesses pay you while you learn. (This has always been my excuse for being a Japanese salaryman instead of going to grad school for Japanese.)

Often the most mundane / everyday things are the most profitable. Online greeting cards, competitions, myspace layouts, avatars, ebooks etc etc.

I think Bingo Card Creator is well known because the author writes a lot of comments, and very often mentions his product in his comments.

Not because he's "loved".

I'm frequently surprised at the high relevance of his comments about BCC. He's not doing some stupid off-topic brand-name-dropping (spammy) like too many are doing everywhere all the time.

Conversely, everyone knows about Mibbit because axod is consistently annoying. And it's written in Java; somewhat unusual around these parts.

I think the take-away here is that "any publicity is good publicity".

I recognize Mixergy, but don't recall what they do.

In my opinion duck duck go is a prominent "brand" on HN for a single simple reason. It's (now forgive my language) but a ballsy startup for a really simple reason. Your competition is Google!!!... and not just a company who happens to be owned by Google, you're competing with Google in their primary business. You're also doing it by yourself, and to top it off you're getting results!! I'll read anything about it, because its essentially like watching the Boston Red Socks play some little league team from Milwaukee... the twist though, is the game is almost tied, and the Boston Red Socks aren't throwing the game. Its plain exciting!

FWIW, I hadn't heard about Duck Duck Go until this article. And I think I spend a fair amount of time on HN...

You probably just gaze through the headlines about it because to be honest Duck Duck Go isn't very eye grabbing, but there are plenty of articles about it and most of the duck duck go blog postings seem to make it to the front page and there are plenty of comments about it.

Possible. I do tend to skip most startup-related content, because I really don't care. But I have still managed to hear about Bingo Card Creator, Mixergy, and Mibbit.

Interesting, if you skip the startup content, which content do you prefer? (Not being snarky, honest question).