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Comment by matt2000 | Hacker News Reader

matt2000

I just wanted to suggest to everyone here who is building a product this thought: product hunt didn't launch on product hunt. It was a simple email test which found an audience and grew from there. That's the opposite of hoping to launch on some list of top products and grab an audience.

It's not a bad thing, but you don't need it. And if you're counting on it having a major impact on your traction, you probably shouldn't be.

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I wish every single person that is upset about ProductHunt's ethics internalizes this comment.

The only people that should really care about PH's ethics are makers. But if you're a maker, you shouldn't care at all about PH. You should be busy talking to users and building product. If you're not seeing traction by doing those two things, then it is nigh impossible that getting on PH will do anything for you. And if you do have traction then getting on PH won't matter!

From the founder's perspective, ProductHunt is mainly good for developing your internal quality benchmarks. Build an MVP you know is good enough to get highly upvoted if it were promoted in the right way, and then try not to care whether or not it actually gets any upvotes when it gets submitted.

Product Hunt's rigged system affects everyone in the startup community. Some of those insider's products had ZERO traction before being on Product Hunt. The insider relationship gave them the boost they needed to get attention from the media and VCs, while denying other startups who were spending their time doing what you say: "talking to users and building product".

I honestly recommend you don't worry about it. If your users love your product then you'll be fine, and the only way I know how to do that is talking to users, iterating and just trying to figure things out. If you get those things right you won't have problems with press, VCs, etc.

I know this is a gross simplification, but it's really worth trying to focus on what matters because there's so many ways to get distracted.

Again, who says the world is supposed to be fair? Am I supposed to believe that every product written about in TechCrunch is there because of its merits alone? What about funding? We should probably band together on forums to talk about how some founders are born into money and VC relationships and others aren't. This all seems a bit silly, to be honest.

It's kind of that they give the impression it's a fair vote when it isn't that's annoying. And indeed the world isn't fair. However individual sites can be. It reminds me a bit of the early days of Google vs search engines where you could buy higher placement or Stackoverflow vs Experts Exchange neither of which went so good for the unfair players.

Wow. A brand new product review site that nobody has ever heard of is in complete control over the startup landscape. Has anyone sold the movie rights yet?

How do you talk to users if you can't get users?

You don't have friends/family? You don't have a social network at all? You don't have coffee shops near you? There's no place where your target market is congregating? You can't pick up the proverbial phone book and call someone's office?

If you are honestly relying on PH to bring you users your startup is already dead.

This. Nobody owes you anything, the least of all some perceived "fairness" in Valley media. In the prioritized list of things I need to accomplish to continually move my startup forward, "spending time thinking about Product Hunt" is sandwiched somewhere between "Start an Ello account" and "attend more pay-to-pitch events."

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