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How Product Hunt really works

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695 points brw12 | 2 comments | 15 Dec 15 19:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.451s | source
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birken ◴[15 Dec 15 21:14 UTC] No.10740521[source]▶
Hacker News is a long-running, open, inclusive startup community that is subsidized by a related business, doesn't sell anything, and has proven time and again to do things good for the entire startup community.

Product Hunt is a new, closed, exclusive startup community run by a for-profit company that will eventually have to start selling you something.

Not sure why people complain about PH so much... just don't use it. There already is a perfectly good community of startup people out there that has much more incentive to stay "pure" than a for-profit one. Sure, HN isn't perfect, but fundamentally it is always going to be better than any for-profit communities.

(And also this obligatory comment: If you want to build a successful company, stop wasting your time browsing startup communities and spend your time talking with users and building your product)

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prawn ◴[15 Dec 15 21:20 UTC] No.10740564[source]▶
There already is a perfectly good community of startup people out there that has much more incentive to stay "pure" than a for-profit one.

Until you finally launch, submit a Show HN to have your perceived turn in the sun and it completely bombs. I can see why people look to alternatives for a chance to get feedback or traction for their product, whether it's dominated by insiders or not.

I don't visit Product Hunt but have had a product top their daily list on launch and it was helpful. The equivalent Show HN didn't really go anywhere.

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dang ◴[15 Dec 15 21:41 UTC] No.10740681[source]▶
> Until you finally launch, submit a Show HN to have your perceived turn in the sun and it completely bombs

We sometimes invite people to repost those or (if not too much time has gone by) we give them a second shot at the front page. There's one on the front page now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10730695.

Helping the best content to surface is hard. Anyone who knows of a good post that deserves a second chance should email us (hn@ycombinator.com). Eventually we may build support for this into the software.

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prawn ◴[16 Dec 15 01:49 UTC] No.10741838[source]▶
Appreciate your work Dan, just saying that I can see why people stray from the "perfectly good" community: because when it comes time to finally have your launch moment, it's so tough on HN. And I bet it feels like a kick in the guts for people who've slaved over their app and finally talked themselves into showing people what they've been working on.

And it's tougher again without asking friends to give you a boost and if you're outside the main active timezones.

If there was a top bracket or sidebar that helped bring Show/Ask topics to the attention of all users, that would help IMO. There's also no incentive to upvote topics, no explicit messaging "Should this make HN front page for a bit?" or "Was this good?", so I bet many don't hit the arrow.

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1. richardbrevig ◴[16 Dec 15 06:43 UTC] No.10742778[source]▶
There could be a lot of different reasons why your "Show HN" wasn't successful. Applying that to every "Show HN" is not correct.

My experience was very different from yours. Stayed on the front page 16 hours, spot #5 for 5 hours (iirc). Similar to you, I had to work myself up to even submit it. I procrastinated 2 hours before posting. Only told 1 friend I had posted. However, I'd consider mine very successful. I did not expect it to be, because if I had, I would have increased the Digital Ocean droplet and my server would not have crashed. Of the ~5 hours I was at spot #5, my server was down almost 3 hours between 3 different crashes.

I say this on reddit often, between Show HN and PH, people give PH way too much credit. Show HN is a great launching platform, just remember who the audience is.

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2. prawn ◴[17 Dec 15 21:28 UTC] No.10754691[source]▶
There are countless Show HNs that never make the front page. I'd guess far more don't make it than do. And I think the average Show HN is far better than the average HN submission.