Product Hunt is dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#31

Post by mhashemi » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #27

Is there a good popular version of a site like alternative.to for SaaS apps? Google AI search makes it pretty easy to find alternatives in most product categories, but sometimes the explicit organization is useful for very new items.

AlternativeTo is full of SaaS apps! If you're not finding one, you should join and add it :)

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#32

Post by mhashemi » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #11

mhashemi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Pro-Duck Hunt. It's right there, not sure how they missed it.

I won a Product Hunt hackathon in ~2015 by making a Produck Hunt game (where you used your phone like the gun): https://www.producthunt.com/products/produck-hunt/launches/p...

And they're still sticking to the kitty 10 years later? There are kids launching apps born after the extinction of Google Glass.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#33

Post by reactordev » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

mhashemi wrote: post #14

tchock23 wrote: post #12

All you have to do is look at the minuscule number views on any YouTube video links shared with a new product on PH. I've seen products with upvotes in the hundreds, yet it has single digit views on the related product video. One would think if there was real interest someone would click to watch a video?

Exactly. The PH docs make a big deal about having a video demo, too. Then they go ahead and hand-pick launches to feature that don't even meet that criterion. And for what?

For returns on investment

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#34

Post by rchaud » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

I associate ProductHunt with lots of rocket emojis and artificial-seeming comments congratulating the company on launching. There is usually zero discussion of the product itself, so the whole thing came off as a way to advertise for free. Dead Internet Theory in action.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#35

Post by xnx » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

mhashemi wrote: post #31

xnx wrote: post #27

Is there a good popular version of a site like alternative.to for SaaS apps? Google AI search makes it pretty easy to find alternatives in most product categories, but sometimes the explicit organization is useful for very new items.

AlternativeTo is full of SaaS apps! If you're not finding one, you should join and add it :)

Thanks! I'll check that out. Didn't know if there was some other site that was more popular than AlternativeTo for Saas/web-apps.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#36

Post by PTOB » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #30

> And it's predatory to foster a "community" where clout peddlers can predate on a The sentence is missing the ending.

Here's the rest of it: > ... well-constructed sentence.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#37

Post by siva7 » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

Let me communicate this clearly for the subtype of HN users who are engaged in some startup thing: You won't find actual users for your product on Product Hunt because neither normal people nor most nerds browse product discovery sites. VC's don't care either (except for self-promotion).

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#38

Post by pembrook » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

One time I was at a Holiday Inn at the same time as some multi-level marketer (pyramid scheme) conference. Breakfast conversation sounded like this:

Girl 1: "You should really check out Mary Kay, I'm making a fortune and could use help!"

Girl 2: "I'm not interested because I'm too busy making a fortune selling Herbalife, would love to send you some materials if you're interested!"

Girl 3: "Wow, that sounds great, I'd join you both if I weren't so busy getting rich selling the wonderful products in this Amway catalogue! Here's my card."

...This is what Product Hunt felt like the last time I visited organically like 7 years ago.

Somehow in the early days it didn't though, it felt like more of a community finding cool new stuff. Encouraging people to turn their PH launch into an "event" poisoned the well I think.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#39

Post by mhashemi » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #34

I associate ProductHunt with lots of rocket emojis and artificial-seeming comments congratulating the company on launching. There is usually zero discussion of the product itself, so the whole thing came off as a way to advertise for free. Dead Internet Theory in action.

Yes, DIT is dead on. Though not completely for free. Front page is gonna cost ya $100-200.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#40

Post by asadm » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

Product hunt was always "artificial". Having done a few launches there, I highly prefer doing an HN launch. HN yields more traffic anyway (like x3-x10 more depending on what you launched).