> know's how to write

In fact Xe's personal writings[1] are quite regularly on the frontpage as well. I'd post an HN domain listing link, but the domain recently changed.

[1]: https://xeiaso.net

I actually learned how to write well as a result of my posts getting on Hacker News so much! I have you people to thank in the comments for my writing style getting so much better over the years. Thanks!

The links are very relevant. It seems a well-known phenomenon.

I think a core set of high-karma people heavily promoted Tailscale on HN in early days (and until recently). Like, not just commenting on Tailscale’s posts, but actively advertising it on various social media. I think that was crucial.

I don’t think it works well if you are not connected to or supported by these people.

If you mean "actively advertising Tailscale on social media", that's true. Tailscale is amazing. One of the most impressive things I've seen in my whole career. Of course people are talking it up.

If you mean "actively advertising Tailscale HN submissions on social media", no, no way. It wouldn't even work. The watchword of people with long experience on HN and who care about submissions is "don't talk about submissions on social media"; it trips the voting ring detector, which nobody knows how it works, and it is incredibly embarrassing talking to Dan to ask "did the voting ring detector flag this post (or are we just not as cool as we think we are)".

On top of that: Tailscalers were notable for their technical blogging before Tailscale existed. Avery's posts have been doing well on HN for years.

Finally, there is, if not a formula, then a sort of base recipe, like of a French mother sauce, for a strong HN post. Tailscale reliably hits all the notes. Dan has posted some of them in his Launch HN advice, if you're interested. There's a good chance Tailscale would rank well even if the product wasn't universally beloved by everyone, just because they've got their writing tuned the right way.

Add all that up and it's surprising to me that Tailscale isn't on HN more than it is.

I really don't think that's true. I'd be happy to look at past data to check that, if you have any links that you recall giving you this impression, but in my memory, the Tailscale people did basically nothing to promote themselves on HN and the user reaction (including from whatever high-karma users) was completely organic.

I do think the pedigree of the founders helps them a lot, but that's a different issue and also counts as completely organic. It's just harder to pull off if you haven't put in 20 years of hard work beforehand.

It's so soul- and bone-crushingly difficult for most startups to get attention on HN that I understand why it seems like these 'darling' successes must be pulling strings or knobs or levers, but it's really not like that. It's actually the other way around: if anyone does try to pull strings or knobs or levers, but without doing work and writing content that the community is genuinely excited by, the result would be a community backlash.

The other side is that the 'darling status' phenomenon is interesting and contains lessons for people who do hope to get attention for their work on HN.

Absolutely false. Tailscale is a darling exactly due to merit. They’ve earned every ounce of my love just by their product being so damn solid, easy to use, and elegant.

It. Just. Works. And it uses WireGuard. It solved every issue I had with WireGuard, which was mainly access control, user provisioning/auth, and device clients.

I’ve said it before, I’d happily pay them more than I pay now for 10 users.