Justin Jackson

justinjackson.ca · Personal blog · on HN since 2011

Justin Jackson is a Canadian software entrepreneur and podcaster who writes about building products, marketing and bootstrapping startups.

What HN saysHN commenters recommend him for startup advice aimed at developers, especially marketing and finding what people want.
115HN people shared it
34linked it in comments
173stories submitted
4.6Kstory points
5 months agolast shared
2011people per year2026

Most-shared posts

  1. 1
    This is a web page
    29 people · 1.4K points · first shared 2013 · 420 comments on HN
  2. 2
    How do I build something that people want?
    5 people · 12 points · first shared 2019 · 2 comments on HN
  3. 3
    Homepage
    5 people · first shared 2013
  4. 4
    I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)
    4 people · 642 points · first shared 2016 · 222 comments on HN
  5. 5
    The principle that changed my life
    4 people · 10 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
  6. 6
    Should we always charge more?
    3 people · 13 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
  7. 7
    Business is more like surfing
    3 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
  8. 8
    Marketingfordevelopers
    3 people · first shared 2014
  9. 9
    This coupon code is a slap in the face
    2 people · 511 points · first shared 2013 · 245 comments on HN
  10. 10
    Things I've quit doing at my desk
    2 people · 279 points · first shared 2012 · 96 comments on HN
  11. 11
    Where do you find the time for side projects?
    2 people · 233 points · first shared 2014 · 130 comments on HN
  12. 12
    We need more calm companies
    2 people · 81 points · first shared 2024 · 24 comments on HN
  13. 13
    How remote work changed my life
    2 people · 37 points · first shared 2013 · 16 comments on HN
  14. 14
    Things to do when Amazon S3 is down
    2 people · 16 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
  15. 15
    Why we buy from winners
    2 people · 14 points · first shared 2016 · 2 comments on HN

What HN people wrote when they linked it

abhutra · 2017-03-10
No doubt Indie Hacker is great source learn directly from others' experience. But I was looking something which covers more about fundamentals and used case. Like why to startup/ when to start/ who should be in your team etc. https://justinjackson.ca/ definitely looks like something which I am looking for.
mattbgates · 2017-01-31
I don't know if he is considered a developer, but I think Justin Jackson has some awesome startup advice (for developers). He follows others closely and draws from their experiences as well. There are two things that I commonly see: 1. You have to fail in your first startup to understand. 2. Just because you had that experience doesn't mean the same person will I don't fully agree. The fact is, you can always take heed of advice from ANYONE who has run a startup, gained experience, knows what works and what doesn't; and feel pretty confident that those people know what they are talking about. When it comes to startup.. no need to jump right in and fail like so many others. There are plenty of things you can do in order to NOT fail... and that is.. following the advice of others who have failed, maybe still failing, and found even some hint of successes. His website deserves a visit and a few reads.. just randomly choose some articles with good headlines: https://justinjackson.ca He'll pull you right in. Sounds like a great guy who is just trying to make his own living to support his family while creating financial freedom away from the mundane workplace, while also helping others.
adamzerner · 2022-11-06
The idea here reminds me of one of my favorite blogs posts ever: https://justinjackson.ca/words.html
lfx · 2019-01-03
Justin Jackson (CA) started start-up with American co-founder. He podcasts and is active on social media. I think he may have some pointers if you reach out. * https://justinjackson.ca/ * https://transistor.fm/
siquick · 2018-02-15
Traction is brilliant. Also Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis (formerly Dropbox) is worth reading. And checkout this course >> https://justinjackson.ca/marketingforproductpeople/
rafapaez · 2016-10-18
Hey Justin! Thank you very much for your time on writing this great comment. You made a good point here so I'm going to follow your advice around those tips. At the moment, the only thing I know for sure is WHY I'm building it. Curiously, I did read some time ago your excellent post about the "The freedom ladder" (https://justinjackson.ca/freedom/). I realised I needed to startup from the bottom. I'd say I'm in the 2nd or 3rd step of the freedom ladder, so I aim to: Make a small project, Release for free, Help people and Build my audience. Obviously, it would be nice to get some revenue later, so I can dedicate my full time to help others with my project, but that's not a priority for me at the moment. I'll continue working not defining those points. I'll also definitely check your book and related new interactive course. Great thanks! Rafa
mijustin · 2016-05-12
OP here. This is a follow-up to my original essay: "This is a web page." https://justinjackson.ca/words.html
syoc · 2016-05-12
Wanted to check out his root site. Not really sure if he is walking the walk https://justinjackson.ca/
falicon · 2015-10-26
Justin Jackson just released a book around this very topic "Marketing for Developers" -> http://justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers/ It's full of great advice...but I think one of the key take aways is to "find a market" before you really "have an idea"...and he walks you through some really good ways to do that (using real world case studies of people that are doing it)
nverba · 2013-06-23
I think this is a bridge too far. Justin Jackson made a good point about approaching your content first etc, but stripping back to just plain text just makes this harder to read. In fact, if you've read the first post http://justinjackson.ca/words.html, I'd argue that this almost impossible to read through to the end without skipping. Which sort of dilutes the whole point... Perhaps the post should read: This is a regular text file. Nothing advanced and not much to see here but some words. And you're pretty sure you've read this already, quite recently in fact... AND THAT'S ANNOYING! You're probably not even reading this bit, as most of you will have elected to skip to the end only to find I'm plugging something. Now that's amazing...
kenbellows · 2013-06-21
I read his daughter's squirrel story [1]. I loved the last line: "Poor grandma Jalapeno she got arested for turning into superman." [1] http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
pbhjpbhj · 2013-06-20
Summary: the article claims that words are what makes the web what it is and that instead of being an after-thought in design they should be at the fore of web design. That words alone can convey a powerful [enough] message and so, it is intimated, minimal design is sufficient. His blog, e.g. http://justinjackson.ca/the-principle-that-changed-my-life/, seems to follow pretty mainstream design ideas.
kevstev · 2022-11-03
I am continually shocked at how few people actually care about this. Maybe I am just showing my age, because I remember in college, and even when I got my first cable modem, I could easily just spin up apache or IIS and have a website hosted from my house, with no additional money or hoops required- start up a webserver, pop in the IP into my browser, or my dynamic dns, and there we were on the web! This lead to all kinds of experimentation and such, even if I did get "hacked by Chinese!" when I had IIS running around 2001ish. Google has been doing a great job of killing the "personal internet" by making it undiscoverable for several years, but now that we require a third party to somehow be involved, and likely a fee of some sort to be paid- I don't trust that the likes of Lets Encrypt and its duplicators to be available forever, the original "anyone can publish" dream of the web is dying in front of us. This: https://justinjackson.ca/words.html does not require SSL in any form, in fact most websites don't need it at all- and the obsession with even blogs wanting you to make accounts and to have to login, its all just heading in a very wrong direction. Its just deplorable to me that I now need a third party to essentially tell me that I can be on the Internet. Its a huge step backwards in so many ways. And no one seems to care!
NinjaWarrior · 2013-07-01
I still completely disagree making the web an application platform. Because of the absurd HTML5 cult, many websites are obtaining unpredictable and inconsistent behavior. The difficulty of explaining it to my old parents is increasing day by day. Moreover, browsers are getting fatter unlimitedly and only a few vendors can survive and develop them. It gives browser vendors special privileges. As we are experiencing now, no one can stop this "Disable JavaScript" removing. How can people say this is "open" movement? The good old web is dying. The web should be words and documents first (I think this page is worth reading http://justinjackson.ca/words.html). It's too late to say but if you want a sandboxed application platform, develop it out of the web. I still believe the plug-in was not a that bad idea, not the best idea though. At least you can disable it anytime and you have freedom of choice. I suspect that the back button will be eliminated next. Because it collapses most web applications and "user experience". If the web want to become a perfect application platform, all virtue of the web will be lost.
rchaud · 2026-03-18
The manifesto of "have a fucking website" or "I'm a fucking webmaster"[0] or "The People's Web"[1] is something that in the modern age, ends up as a commercialized newsletter or as an e-tip jar or blogspam with a thousand Amazon affiliate links. The website as a means of personal expression came about because traditional communications media ignored the niches they cared about. Fan sites and shrines covered TV shows or bands that didn't get coverage in mainstream magazines. Conspiracy sites arose because traditional media eschewed them. Today, every niche is covered somewhere, because the Internet became a business. A GIF site on Geocities was free. Buzzfeed took that idea and became a publicly traded company. [0] https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/ [1] https://www.anildash.com/2019/12/23/the-peoples-web/
i-dont-remember · 2025-12-18
This is neat, I appreciate that even if I can't use the service, i still learned something new about what's possible. Gonna keep it in the back-pocket for sharing with friends. Also reminded me of when Justin Jackson talked about how he hired his kids for help with real projects and the positives from it https://justinjackson.ca/flipping-tables
tejonutella · 2024-10-06
Honestly there’s tons of ways to make money. Noise is whatever distracts you from what you actually want to do. I struggle with this myself tbh but I feel this is somewhat relevant: https://justinjackson.ca/surfing
derrickreimer · 2019-05-28
Totally! To clarify, by the "drop the ball" do you mean knowing when to call it quits if something is not working out? I recently wrote about my experience with that: https://www.derrickreimer.com/essays/2019/05/17/im-walking-away-from-t… My friend Justin Jackson also published a good article about this too: https://justinjackson.ca/giveup
bigbugbag · 2017-07-28
Somehow it seems you live in a quite different world than I do or maybe I didn't understand what you meant here. Those still work in every browsers I've tried so the major browsers developer have to cut more established functionality: https://justinjackson.ca/words.html http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
jaclaz · 2017-07-20
Just in case: https://justinjackson.ca/words.html Maybe a bit "extreme", an "artistic site" has all the rights in the world (+1) to be "artistic", but maybe it has been a tadbit overdone.
agumonkey · 2015-11-17
Since the web has gone into distributed application / magazine, density has dropped. http://imgur.com/MRnd81J http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://justinjackson.ca/words.html TBC
marcofiset · 2015-09-26
Marketing for Developers, by Justin Jackson http://justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers/
Rangi42 · 2015-08-17
This already is a nice template. Plain text that responds well to zooming by the user; default colors that are easy to read and make links obvious; a few important images that are large enough to see, but don't take up half the screen like some sites' banners. If you prefer white-on-black text and have a user stylesheet for it (which I do), the site responds well to that too, without any nested <div>s or background-image:s complicating things (unlike some). I don't think that HTML5 web fonts or a whitespace-heavy designer template would aid in conveying any of the brief and well-organized information on the page. See also: http://justinjackson.ca/words.html and http://motherfuckingwebsite.com. (The only thing I would add to either of those is this bit of CSS: body{max-width:900px;margin:0 auto;} to make it easier to read on wide screens.)
kingmanaz · 2015-04-26
If the product is an article, this: http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
dredmorbius · 2014-04-13
Oddly, on mobile this site robs 33% of my screen with persistent header and footer elements. See: this is a web page. http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
charlieirish · 2014-01-20
The most powerful tool on the web is still words... And if your words are good, people will read them. [1] There's something incredibly powerful about this piece of work and about the world in which we live. That's why Justin's single web page was translated in to 20 languages and shared over 8,000 times in just a few hours. [2] [1] http://justinjackson.ca/words.html [2] HN Submission & Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5913381
Gertig · 2013-11-25
This looks like it was inspired by mijustin's post "This is a web page." http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
agargarg · 2013-06-23
> In fact, if you've read the first post http://justinjackson.ca/words.html, I'd argue that this almost impossible to read through to the end without skipping. That's interesting: I saw the plaintext version first, which I had no problem reading. But in the HTML version, the fact that all bold sentences are pretty mundane and the excessive use of italic and bold just made me want to skip the whole page. In fact I didn't even notice it was the same content until I went back to your post!
cranefly · 2013-06-23
Different guy, written because of that previous webpage http://justinjackson.ca/words.html

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