HACKER Q&A
📣 schruteroots

How do I get press coverage for my startup as a high schooler?


I'm a 17-year-old from a small town in India. There are barely any opportunities for young entrepreneurs in my town and most of what I have achieved so far is by connecting with people and getting to know more about the events as such. I started programming at an early age ( 11 ) and have built several projects since then. I'm the founder of DomeCode ( https://domecode.com ), a platform that improvises upon existing "learn-to-code" platforms by providing a unified experience. I have gotten over 300 registered users at this point ( I realized it barely 3 weeks back in the alpha version ) and over 2.6k users. This is something that would usually get media coverage especially if a highschooler built it. How do I get media coverage?

Reasons :

- Better chances of getting my startup crowdfunded

- It's something good for my college application

- I believe this needs to get out there


  👤 matt_s Accepted Answer ✓
Some feedback on the site:

It says 6 languages are supported yet when I click deeper I only see things for Python and Java. If I wanted to learn Go, why would I choose your site over golangs [0]?

I think more complete content would pull in more users. You pull in more users and you will have better chance of word spreading. Developers wanting to learn language $X are going to see how much content a site has first before committing to using that site.

Maybe have a screen cast showing what the user experience is like, demonstrate how note taking, practice, reminders and music all come together. I think your intent is to make it so the user doesn't have to use other tools to help them learn. Focus on that more.

It has this gradient color text thing on black background going on which might seem cool but will turn off people, especially those with color blind or vision issues. I'm by no means a designer but a professional design or theme could help. You might be thinking it will look like a lot of other sites, there are reasons why lots of other sites have a similar look/feel. Your site can still be unique and stand out somehow (again I'm not a designer.) If dark-mode is part of the experience, highlight that or make it a preference.

[0] https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1


👤 gus_massa
You alredy posted about this project multiple times https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=arthtyagi

Try contacting the mods hn@ycombinator.com


👤 auganov
Could try reaching out on Twitter to tech journalists. Or emailing some.

Write this story yourself as if you were a journalist covering it (just don't write in 3rd person) and put it up on the company blog (or wherever). Link to that when pitching the story.

Might sound counterintuitive but linking to an existing story makes it so much easier in my experience.


👤 forgotmysn
make a lot of money

👤 stevewodil
Keep spamming it on HN, I'm sure the press will come through one of these times