Show HN: A directory of startups that did things that don't scale

31 pointsposted 10 days ago
by rgyc

6 Comments

mrngm

9 days ago

After looking a while at the 1 degree rotated <div>s, even HN feels tilted. It's a nice effect, but I would only use it as an animation while hovering (i.e. animate from 0 degree to 1 degree rotation, if you must. Otherwise, don't do it to keep the interface clean). Personally, I would leave out all animations, unless they visually help the user with a certain task.

And since you're asking, here's a few things that come to mind regarding the design:

- Stick to one font family. There seems no need to semantically distinguish different parts of the text; the use of font size and decoration already take care of that. I would keep the Bricolage Grotesque and ditch the monospace font.

- It should be interesting to read the stories on the main page, but in the current setting, three columns (on 1920x1080) feels to crowded. Two columns seems to be okay for that screen size, but perhaps three columns work as well if the padding is a bit different (see next point).

- Try fiddling around with the left and right padding in the quotation blocks, as well as text justification. On smaller screens, there's about three to four words on each line, and lots of empty space.

- The ten "things to do" are identically styled as the call to action buttons ("Share your story" in the menu bar, "Start doing things that don't scale"), but there's no action involved. I think the quotation block style would be better: blue background, yellow title (e.g. "Ask for help and referrals"), white text (e.g. "Leverage your network for initial users and incentivize them to refer others to rapidly expand your user base."). The user can easily distinguish the important stuff (title) from the accompanying explanation, and it doesn't look clickable.

And some other nits:

- A few "Source" links are broken.

- Privacy Policy gives a 404.

- On the /startups page, I already forgot what the ten recommendations were. Perhaps add ten filters that automatically select the stories that involve the particular recommendation.

- Does the epicness scale go from 1 (low) to 10 (high) (or 5 it seems?)

kbrecordzz

8 days ago

This is a nice art installation that gives a positive vibe! You made something out of your fascination and admiration and that feeling spreads to the visitor. I think you should embrace this as an art installation whose purpose is to just exist, instead of trying to make it useful to people. That’s a startup way of thinking, but maybe this thing doesn’t need to be practical.

langcss

9 days ago

> Most startups fail because they focus on scaling too soon.

You sure about that?

Other than that....Great site by the way :)

aiagentsdir

5 days ago

Nice idea. I would recommend improve mobile view by adjusting paddings and margins

ryann_wisc

9 days ago

Looks very cool. I like that it links to the source as well. Curious though: how are you coming up with the 2-sentence description at the top of each example?

Arrgh

9 days ago

me: "this is great advice"

also me: "I have no interest in working on things that don't scale"