How Product Hunt really works

Speaking of "PH is rigged by insiders," it's worth noting that a "top user" is selling a book on how to best pander to the PH userbase: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TP3MFHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=...

This is an odd racket, to say the least.

Re/code wrote a relevant article a few months back (http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup-kingma...) about Product Hunt elitism, which I was interviewed for and the response from the PH team to the article was essentially "haters gonna hate." It's disappointing that nothing has changed since then, and arguably, things have gotten worse.

Wow. I'd be fascinated to know how well this book sells.

Seems like a 8 dollar add for their promotional services, really.

What is a shame about it is that they had a rare opportunity in that they actually had traction and buzz around PH.

If they had taken a different attitude and truly tried to make it THE launch platform, they could have done amazing things. They could have democratized a big chunk of it, and still had promoted positions that could generate revenue for them.

PH Is the ultimate bubble startup. A literal circlejerk wrapped in some clean CSS and nice JS.

Get used to shit like this as increasingly more MBAs flock to the valley...

For those older in the community, the archetype of the honorable hacker - does it still exist?

Hard to find the Wozs of the world in the sea of douchetastic MBAs and former consultant/bankers. My personal favorite is the wave of MBA VC Associates every summer and fall.

Recently had dinner with a founder who kept on going about his "personal brand" and leveraging that to waste other peoples' money until he struck it big!

PH can feel a lot like a popularity contest and a SV insider's club, not like a democratization of launch.

Not the only book on PH, either: http://buildandlaunch.net/book/the-product-hunt-handbook/

I don't go to PH anymore, too many cookie cutter prototypes, often with some annoying self-importance. I do think there are neat collections which are fun to browse, but it's not a platform for launching, or discovering the next thing in tech or anything quite like that. Mostly entertainment... I might have felt differently almost a year ago. Not sure what exactly changed.

And yeah, the elitism is a thing too, but now it's pretty much open to everyone... pretty trivial to get an invite.

Send me fifty bucks for my book, "how to get people to send you $50 for your book"

Doesn't it just mean that the launch platform space is ripe fo disruption?

Seriously. My first introduction to PH was when Tuft & Needle was linked to it a few years ago. For several months after that I was hooked daily to the site. I couldn't believe all these innovative companies existed that I could have never found on HN. But once they started to get popular the quality of the products just went down the drain. The number of apps that make it to not just the front page but often on of the top ranked that "help you meditate" or "help you break life habits" is unreal. Also the "elitism" is shown through the fact that most of the products are now products used by startups whereas in the beginning it used to be mostly products the general public can use. I rarely use PH anymore. I'll take a look at it here and then, but definitely not a main source of discovery anymore.