Why do dev tools crush it on Product Hunt but never seem to raise money? | Hacker News Reader

Why do dev tools crush it on Product Hunt but never seem to raise money?

I’ve noticed a lot of small dev tools (like CLIs, build tools, debugging apps, etc.) do really well on Product Hunt and Twitter. They get upvotes, stars, good feedback, but very few of them raise money or turn into sustainable businesses.

Is this just because they’re too niche, or is it more about the business model? Maybe most of these tools solve a clear problem but don’t have a path to becoming “venture-scale”? Or maybe devs are a tough audience to monetize?

Curious if anyone here has built something like this or tried to raise for a devtool and hit a wall. Would love to hear others’ thoughts or stories.

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My assumption is they are built by a developer to solve the problems of that developer, in a way that developer understands, and requires too much knowledge of how it works to make it useful for anyone else.

A guy I worked with made a seemingly awesome tool to solve various problems (builds, cicd, etc). He used it for everything, but when anyone else had to do anything with it, they went to him. No one had the patience to learn how to use it or to learn that they needed to plug into it. He had documentation, but it was very long, so no one wanted to read it; it was also focused on what he cared about, not what users actually wanted. Going into the code was a non-starter. It was over 1m LOC spread across dozens of repos and thousands of files. So people either asked him, or just did their own thing.

I made a little tool to help in an operations job I had years ago. People saw me using it and wanted it, but I knew there were too many sharp edges. I knew to avoid them, since I knew the code. I ended up spending a significant amount of time smoothing out those edges, adding a GUI, making in configurable in said GUI... all if this took way more time than the initial tool I was using. This did get some adoption in our small internal group. If someone is just looking to get something out there to see if there is enough interest to justify development, I'm guessing they aren't making things that nice to use. I was getting paid anyway, so I didn't care.

There are 3 types of people that are active on Product Hunt:

1. Promoters who just like being there and upvote "cool" things. Or they were asked by "a friend" to come and upvote the post.

2. Users of the potential tool. They could use the tool but don't have real power to buy.

3. Actual potential buyers.

#3 is mostly non-existent on PH especially for dev tools.

PH has been completely gamed.

You launch there and your LinkedIn inbox will be flooded with people offering to get you 500 upvotes and 50 comments in $300.

It’s either that or the people who are about to launch in the coming week engaging with your launch so you do the same for them.

To raise is a signal of a combination - market identified as large enough to make it worth the risk, competitor analysis, go to market strategy, founder perceived capability, team, perceived ability to be better/faster at getting market share vs competitors. Clicks(upvotes, feedback etc) have no value in themselves. Founders have the job to make a sustainable business, but before they do they have to convince others they can - through some of the things i listed above. "Too niche" already implies too small market to make VCs care. Also PMF + people upvoting with their wallet or high growth could also be raising signals.

If you're looking for a general answer, i don't believe it exists.

I guessit's a mix of market size, monetization difficulty, and investor expectations: - a CLI or build tool can get huge love from devs but still serve a small, finite market - many devs will happily use a free open-source tool but won't pay unless it's mission-critical - funding is biased toward sales-driven models - successful paid devtools usually have enterprise-grade support - PH and X are cool but not for validating a sustainable business

They get upvotes, stars, good feedback

These are not customers.

They are not even users.

Voting and staring and writing comments are easier than using a product.

And posting on product hunt is easier than finding actual customers.

Much much much easier.

That's the attraction of product hunt. for hunters it's info-tainment.

And for people with products, throwing something up on product hung is much much much easier than selling. Good luck.

You're basically giving away your production implementation to a bunch of developers who will copy it outright.

Devs are a fairly easy audience to monetize - tools like Cursor hit high revenues in record times. Look at some of the big non-AI acquisitions too - many go for multibillions compared to consumer apps. Datadog charges a lot of money but nobody wants to drop it.

It's more that Product Hunt is a terrible measure. It's more of a sport, similar to hackathons.

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