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Product Hunt is dead

sedimental.org

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Re: Product Hunt is dead

#41

Post by minimaxir »

Product Hunt has been always been native marketing for VCs to launder perceived credibility to products they fund, and for PH that's not a bug, it's a feature.

The root problem particularly in 2025 is that discovery for new products is dead as the social frameworks such as have died out for various reasons, such as X's algorithm being very unfriendly to external links. There's a reason that most talked about tech products are for reasons extrinsic to the quality of the product itself, such as their founders (e.g. Cluely). The days of an indie project from an unknown developer going viral organically on Hacker News and getting massive interest of VCs have long since been over: hell, even Launches from YC companies on Hacker News don't get buzz anymore.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#42

Post by sandGorgon »

totally this.

recently posted my opensource enterprise browser on producthunt - https://www.producthunt.com/products/wootzapp-ai-enforced-en...

did decently (but not in top 10). I got a lot of the same linkedin comments with "we even gave you some reviews for free to show we are serious". Said no to them and that turned into retribution.

started getting negative comments https://postimg.cc/n9tDDB0S . had to stay up all night to reply to negative comments with link to my github showing the source :(

for some reason they all deleted themselves (or got removed). not sure.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#43

Post by siva7 »

minimaxir wrote: post #41

Product Hunt has been always been native marketing for VCs to launder perceived credibility to products they fund, and for PH that's not a bug, it's a feature. The root problem particularly in 2025 is that discovery for new products is dead as the social frameworks such as have died out for various reasons, such as X's algorithm being very unfriendly to external links. There's a reason that most talked about tech pro…

It's a really weird time we're living in now. I could at least tell 10 years ago a launch would get often times buzz primarily because of the quality of the product. Nowadays the coin has flipped - the buzz is usually about anything else but the actual product.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#44

Post by pavlov »

mhashemi wrote: post #21
alberth wrote: post #19

I always thought Product Hunt, due to a16z investing in it back in 2014, was more of a media engine for their own portfolio companies than anything else. Maybe I wrongly assumed all these years. https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/08/product-hunt-gets-6-1-mill...

Well, it's not a bad thesis in 2014. They seem to have had a pretty big hand in killing their baby in 2022, by bundling it with a crypto startup with a URL that already fails to DNS resolve https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-prologue/

“Web3 is the next big leap for computing” in the first paragraph is a giveaway for a post that was written in that short window between Covid and the FTX collapse.

The shitcoins are still with us, but at least nobody pretends they’re going to be used for anything except things like bribing the president.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#45

Post by cb33 »

xnx wrote: post #35
mhashemi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're looking for an alternative to AlternativeTo

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#47

Post by PaulHoule »

electric_muse wrote: post #8

I feel this. Tried launching something in 2022. Night of the launch, my whole team pulls an all nighter. Some launches suddenly pull ahead with 20 upvotes right out of the gate. We have a handful. I see the same LinkedIn messages this author cites, but I ignore them. Why cheat? Once someone secure a top spot, all the traffic goes to those apps, and they stay ahead to matter what. Accumulative advantage. 1 hour later,…

Also Product Hunt is no substitute for a marketing plan but for a large number of people it is.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#48

Post by gitmagic »

siva7 wrote: post #37

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).

This. I got more spam than actual users when I launched on Product Hunt. Pretty sure majority of people on PH are just there to promote their own services and products.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#49

Post by derefr »

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?

> One would think if there was real interest someone would click to watch a video?

If a third-party product PR fluff-piece gets me interested in a product, I click over to the product's own site (and maybe watch a first-party video, if available.) I trust the product's vendor to understand and explain the product's USP a lot better than some third-party marketing agency will.

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