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Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other

saascurate.com

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Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other

#1

Post by FilipPanoski »

I am an indie hacker and have been launching my products on Product Hunt. Like many of you here, my experience with PH sucked: Lots of bots. Hard to compete.

There's also been many new launch platforms coming up, but all of them make you compete for upvotes. Ugh.

So I have been working on something different: https://saascurate.com/

It's a community-driven platform where indie hackers and SaaS founders help each other grow their products.

The idea is simple - list your product, engage with other founders, gain exposure and social proof. No upvote system.

It's hard and expensive to turn a side project into a viable business, especially for solo makers, so my longterm vision is to be able to help founders grow their products in lots of different ways, like helping with cold outreach, partnerships and other channels.

I know there are a lot of "list your product and forget" platforms, so I am trying to build something different – where the community helps each other grow.

Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear your thoughts and see if this platform can help you grow your products.

Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other
saascurate.com

Re: Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other

#4

Post by FilipPanoski »

WesleyLivesay wrote: post #3

If there are no upvotes, what dictates something being "Featured" on the homepage, the items of which are said to be the "Greatest"?

When you list a product, you can choose whether to feature it or list it for free.

Featuring it costs $9 or 500 karma points (which are earned by contributing). There are also other benefits to featuring: - Get spotlighted in a newsletter sent to all community members - Featured embeddable badge - Dofollow backlink for SEO

Re: Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other

#7

Post by FilipPanoski »

theogravity wrote: post #6

Is the new grift to start a product-hunt style website and charge $$$ to be featured / listed? I've encountered a few of these types of websites already and they seem to be growing in numbers.

Seems like it! I've started building SaaSCurate since June 2024, but since then quite a few platforms like this have emerged. My vision for SaaSCurate is more than to just list a product – I want to build a strong community that helps founders acquire new customers through partnerships and earned media. SaaSCurate is still in MVP phase.

Re: Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other

#8

Post by Centigonal »

I appreciate that you've put months of effort into this project, and your site looks slick. I'm going to share some candid feedback. Not trying to be mean, but I am trying to help you think through your service's value prop and business model.

What you've actually created here is an advertising platform that helps indie hackers and startups get in front of... other bootstrappers. This is a limited audience, in size, in scope, and in available spend.

If you want to build a community, you may be better off with a Discord server and spreading through word of mouth - or something more personalized and closed like Inbox Startup if you want to monetize it. If you want to sit in the middle of the indie hacker community and collect fees on featured slots, you've got find a way to sell access to an audience that's worth $9. You're competing with product sites which are free and ad networks that give you very fine grained targeting of a wide range of audiences.

People go to sites like PH to be surprised and delighted by interesting new products. Even if the upvote system is borked, users have some faith in the wisdom of the crowd and the PH brand. Why would I, as a user, want to see a list of "everyone who had $9 to give to Filip today" over a list of "products other indie hackers thought were cool?"

Finally, a very diligent user might look at 20 products a day on a site like PH or this one. Let's say you sell out your top 20 feature slots every day. That caps you at $66K gross revenue per year... unless you raise your prices.

Re: Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other

#9

Post by theogravity »

FilipPanoski wrote: post #7
theogravity wrote: post #6

Is the new grift to start a product-hunt style website and charge $$$ to be featured / listed? I've encountered a few of these types of websites already and they seem to be growing in numbers.

Seems like it! I've started building SaaSCurate since June 2024, but since then quite a few platforms like this have emerged. My vision for SaaSCurate is more than to just list a product – I want to build a strong community that helps founders acquire new customers through partnerships and earned media. SaaSCurate is still in MVP phase.

I like your honesty! Best of luck in your launch!

Re: Show HN: A Product Hunt alternative where products DON'T compete with each other

#10

Post by FilipPanoski »

theogravity wrote: post #9
FilipPanoski wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it! I've started building SaaSCurate since June 2024, but since then quite a few platforms like this have emerged. My vision for SaaSCurate is more than to just list a product – I want to build a strong community that helps founders acquire new customers through partnerships and earned media. SaaSCurate is still in MVP phase.

I like your honesty! Best of luck in your launch!

Thanks!
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