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Product Hunt is dead

sedimental.org

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61–70 of 119 posts

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#61

Post by superasn »

I agree with this take, Product Hunt felt like it was chasing short term goals instead of building something sustainable They also allowed and sometimes encouraged behavior that undermined the quality of the site

The last time I used it one of the common hacks was adding 50 makers to a single app launch PH also openly condoned mass email blasts and tweets to drive votes which just rewarded whoever could push the hardest on promotion

In contrast Hacker News discourages asking people for upvotes and even treats it as a negative if you do That longterm focus on signal over hype is probably why HN still feels useful today while PH lost its way

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#62

Post by bdcravens »

If you had told me Product Hunt was actually dead, I wouldn't know if the top of my head if you were telling the truth. I haven't paid attention to it in 6 or 7 years. At one point, I'd visit to find something new, useful, or cool. Over time I started seeing little more than tiny iterations on the trend of the moment, and never really found anything worth visiting.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#63

Post by wiradikusuma »

Launching is hard. I put my own side project on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345623 a few days ago and it got exactly zero traction. At first it stung, but then I checked https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew and realized: someone launches something literally every few minutes. The odds are just stacked.

Whether it's Product Hunt, HN, or even LinkedIn (I actually saw better response there lol), it feels like everyone's throwing spaghetti at the same wall at the same time. Pre-internet, that spaghetti was launch parties and press releases. Same energy, same lottery odds.

What seems to work better is launching to people who already know you (e.g. your list), who have the problem you're solving, and are actually waiting for your product. Everything else is just noise.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#64

Post by piker »

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).

I think that's right in the first order, but the second order is that journalists and gadget enthusiasts do, and they may write about your product. That happened to me with my Show HN post on here.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#66

Post by allenu »

piker wrote: post #64
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).

I think that's right in the first order, but the second order is that journalists and gadget enthusiasts do, and they may write about your product. That happened to me with my Show HN post on here.

Agreed. I think it's worth posting on it but the right attitude is just treat it as any other outlet to post your product. Don't fret too much about it or spend too much time prepping and trying to game the timing.

When I've posted projects on there, I found so many bots commenting and then later got several emails from people wanting to "help" me with upvoting for a fee, it made me realize how fake it was.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#67

Post by coreyo »

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.

It seriously lacked what discussion happens in a Product Review or Design Review internally (ideally) at a company.

Re: Product Hunt is dead

#69

Post by tanin »

mhashemi wrote: post #58
tanin wrote: post #55

At this point, PH is more for SEO because, once you hit the top, tons of other websites will link to your product. FinFam looks amazing. It's an interesting take on personal finance because I never really have a view of my own net worth. And, because of that, I have been having a feeling for a while that it causes me to be "too frugal" most of the times.

Yep, from a founder's perspective PH is mostly an SEO thing. I'm not sure if it's the _best_ SEO thing, but I guess that's part of being a first-time founder! Re: feeling too frugal, my friends came up with a name for it, "poor man brain" lol. I talk a little about it here: https://sedimental.org/announcing_finfam.html

Yeah, I think a lot of people who break into tech have a bit of a struggle to adjust to a high TC. I still remember back in the days having a convo about how Subway offered $8 for a foot long and we could eat it for both lunch and dinner during weekend... such a good deal. Meanwhile the company we were at was going IPO. Good old days lol.
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