Analysis of Product Hunt products from 2014 to 2021
components.one
components.one
Despite the posted title, this article is really about productivity apps and the people who use them. For each new app, they hope that this one will finally be the one that magically makes them "productive" where all the previous ones have failed. It then goes on to speculate on why they would do so and subsequently veers off into tangents on bullshit jobs, the role of middle managers in startups and (through a somewhat tortured metaphor of gaming as self-actualization) the role of leisure in the modern economy.
Fun article but not really about product hunt after the first few paragraphs.
Mind fuck - product hunt is not about product hunting either.
It’s spec work. It’s not super clear that’s what it is, but the specs given to you on product hunt are the current zeitgeist. Whether you like it or not, you will build your apps for this hivemind and not for any real problem space.
That assumes the person in question gives two shits about Product Hunt. What I learned from that website is that it isn’t worth it at all. It’s procrastination. It’s a place where wannabe founders gather to look productive and cool. People actually brag about being “top hunters”. It’s cringe worthy.
Back in the real world, every time I searched for a piece of software and landed on Product Hunt, the thing is already dead less than a year after being featured. Successful products become so despite Product Hunt, not because of it. Time and again I’ve seen good products which still endure not do well on PH, while vapid VC-funded hype is praised.
On the other hand, it has become a great filter. Every time I land on a product’s website and they brag about being “Product of the Day” or whatever, it’s usually the only outside validation they can point to. It is a fantastic indicator that what the creators care about is not aligned with my values, and that they’re likely to be in it only for the profit and will abandon the software at the first sign of difficulty.
They pitch it as being able to get exposure from a large, varied audience, except that's not the case at all. Try launching something that doesn't have to do with AI. Go ahead, try, and let me know how it goes. :)
I posted it on Product Hunt and got a good response, made it to the front page even (link if anyone’s curious: https://www.producthunt.com/products/65x24#65x24)
I don’t doubt that there’s a broader metagame that can be hacked, but in my limited experience legitimate passion projects still have a shot there.
Productivity tools in general are for larger scale endeavors with lots of ICs. At some point you start to have stakeholders whose only job is coordination. That's where the real risk of these systems lie—when their usage is so far removed from the actual work that needs doing that feeding the system becomes its own justification.
Edit: missed "now defunct". But if it's somewhere on archive.org would love to read.
The computer technologies and associated market could freely develop in those countries after the USSR collapse in 1992. This tendency was fueled by the abundance of high quality STEM education traditionally available in the region. (Historically, STEM education was subsidized by the USSR government and its military ambitions.)
I believe that the digital evangelism arose due to exceptional freedom of IT companies in those countries. While other, more traditional industries have been raided and decimated by their own corrupt governments, the IT sector remained out of reach of dirty hands.
Those circumstances gave the IT industry in the post-Soviet countries a significant advantage. It was a melting pot of new ideas, makers, universities, companies and startups.
Since then, however, the dynamics changed due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. A lot of companies already committed an exodus to other jurisdictions, while remaining companies will be forced to make it in the future.
I assume they meant "Ukraine and Russia" as a synonym for "eastern Europe" as a whole, but it is a bit dismissive.
You on the other hand can't point to common language, have a paltry 70 years as part of a nordic country, and are literally across a sea. Nothing for it, you need to engineer a breakup of the continental plate and ship your bit across the sea my dude.
Belarus people are fine, the Belarus government has been horrible for a long time, it's not that surprising that people have a bad opinion of the country. And it doesn't look like it's going to get any better: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russias-quiet-...
All the people from Belarus I know fled and will never go back, they have parents and friends who've been jailed for facebook likes, family members tortured, &c.
I would say the same could be argued for "Russia people" as well. They didn't select their dictator either, and have no way to remove him.
Political power comes from the consent of the ruled. All polities have a way to remove dictators. It's not pretty and causes a lot of harm, but then so do dictators.
Just like many Italians chose Berlusconi and many Germans chose Hitler.
I feel sorry for the Russians who didn't choose this, but we shouldn't let the ones who did off the hook.
Russians today can't get rid of Putin through votes.
Russians in the past did vote him into power though. Because of that, they carry a part of the responsibility for what's happening today. Don't let them off the hook.
> In this sense, the gamer does not only include those who play video games (nor does it necessarily include all those who do). The gamer is a synecdoche; skateboarders, people who seriously play sports, interested music listeners, cinephiles, chess players, big wave surfers, and anyone else who orients their lives towards experiences that contain fun as a major ingredient are all subsumed into the persona. Casually playing a game on a subway or after a busy day to unwind doesn't by itself garner the gamer moniker, while taking paid vacation time to spend a focused 100 hours on Elden Ring does.
I think at the heart of tech, the pure hackers, and basically all great things come from these people. They are the people who take what they do seriously, and strive for perfection even where it is not utilitarian. It's how you avoid slop, and build great things...
To some extent I think the labels "gamer" and "nihilist" are overly generous. The divide is "people who love the tech" and "grifters". Creating video game is the least financially profitable venture for an expert software engineer, but (because of this) it is the most spiritually fulfilling. Every gamer knows the indie project made with love beats the billion dollar AAA project 9/10 times.
There's a kind of person who dreams of making big money in marketing but imagines they can do it with no work. These divide into: (a) people who are willing to work on the product but not the marketing, and (b) people don't want to work at all.
I've found there is no way you can get through to either kind of person.
At my undergrad school we had a college radios station KTEK that had a reputation for throwing dances that nobody should up for. I ran for the "public relations officer" job because I wanted my own key so I could open the station up to do my show Saturday afternoons.
I would photocopy several hundred posters with 10-20 different designs and plaster the campus with them and that got crowds to show up. I had a great crew behind me that DJed better than I did so people had a good time and they came back and within a year we had a great reputation.
Often I've either paid or had a volunteer to do similar work and the story is that they think making one poster design and sticking up 20 of them is enough: like the customer is seeking them out that desperately. Nope, you've got to work really hard to be heard in the din and make an impression.
Thus I've got more respect for the grifter who has some hustle than the grifter who doesn't.
Okay also want to point out that slack started as a video game and more specifically a means of communication for a video game company which is kinda funny and maybe reflects the point of this article.
but perplexity or google search didn't help me
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/alanhamlett/producthunt-user...
Isn't it solutionism? Who goes in search of products to try out?
I only see the appeal from builders that want inspiration or people who want to network, usually neither makes for a good user.
Are there people who go to product hunt when they have a problem and want a solution? Or people who have excess budget and look around to see where they can spend their money?
https://test.getdot.ai/share/78626655-b57b-4f90-a730-0af80c0...
ridiculous.
Which is nuts for a simple article page like this (and almost any other use case really). Just leave the native components as they are, especially scrolling.
SaaS starter kits are the MLM of programmers.