How Product Hunt really works

Nothing can hurt a well-meaning first-time founder of some useful side-project business then to learn that a non-entity like Product Hunt is a rigged game where the inner circle are simply gaming the system for their friends and people whom they benefit from and will benefit.

From "top 3% of coders" to "your product will get 1st spot if you scratch our back with a small slice of the pie or counter-promote our product with yours" to "we will only invest in you if you get referred through an acquittance of ours", the game surely does feel more rigged each day.

The upper echelons of tech sure does share more similarities with high-finance then they would like to admit...

Does it feel more rigged because it is becoming more rigged or because the level of rigging that already exists in the ecosystem is becoming more visible?

One thing that makes it feel more like a slap in the face is the current perception of openness.

Folks like Fred Wilson and PG are doing their part to give the impression that everything is open and kinda-sorta known, which wasn't true 15 years ago.

The fact that it's still about equally sleazy then comes as kind of a shock.

Fred Wilson and especially PG have created a dangerous cult of personality around the narrative of the ethical hacker.

Young folks in their 20s and 30s have unfortunately fallen for this narrative hook, line, and sink.

It's very sad when you think of all the wasted man hours, much of it during one's prime, spent pursuing this startup game—inspired in large part by writings from VCs like PG and FW.

PG and Sama present this picture of YC and SV being a place of meritocracy, that aspires to be free of racial or gender bias, where everyone is working on ethical world/life-changing projects.

Old-timers know this is a lie. New-comers are starting to uncover the truth themselves. Those of you who live in SV... just ask yourself how important it is these days where you went to school, what places you worked at, who you know, etc. I was at a hip SF bar the other day. Reminded me totally of DC. Everyone you meet, the same questions:

So what do you do? Where do you goto school? Where do you work?

PG may be a bit over optimistic about good triumphing but personality cult seems a bit inaccurate, certainly if you look at the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality

I'm not saying that PG has built a cult of personality around himself, but rather around the narrative of the ethical, hard-working, pull your own bootstraps, outsider hacker hero.

Think Steve Jobs, Zuck, etc.

> I'm not saying that PG has built a cult of personality around himself

Heh. Are you kidding? Paul Graham could post a fart on Hacker News and it'd get 1200 upvotes in 10 minutes.