- Make a lot of fake accounts to submit content, so it looks like there are many more users than there actually are
- Get mentioned in a very popular essay by Paul Graham
- Eventually stop submitting content from fake accounts once you have grown enough
- Once you are so big that your referral starts showing up in the New York Times, etc. log, people will naturally start putting your buttons on your site.
- There will be some other huge sites that haven't organically put your button on their site yet. Cold email them.
- Post in the comments of any site that mentions you, regardless of the size to make yourself available to them.
There's also a big-font preface: "This only happened to work out well in a very specific instance and while a few elements of my story may be generalizable to your startup, so don't follow any of my advice as though it were intended to be guidelines-for-success."
- Make a lot of fake accounts to submit content, so it looks like there are many more users than there actually are
- Get mentioned in a very popular essay by Paul Graham
- Eventually stop submitting content from fake accounts once you have grown enough
- Once you are so big that your referral starts showing up in the New York Times, etc. log, people will naturally start putting your buttons on your site.
- There will be some other huge sites that haven't organically put your button on their site yet. Cold email them.
- Post in the comments of any site that mentions you, regardless of the size to make yourself available to them.