How We Got Our First 2,000 Users Doing Things That Don't Scale | Hacker News Reader

How We Got Our First 2,000 Users Doing Things That Don't Scale

fastcolabs.com

81 pointsjoelle9 comments

Really interesting to see behind the scenes in terms of connecting with the press.

But this seems more like a minimum viable community than a minimum viable product to me.

  "No matter how useful your product might be, it isn't a business without users"

I think that should read: "without customers".

Is there a plan regarding monetization? There was no mention of this under 'The Uncertain Future' section...

Glad you enjoyed it. WRT to monetization, our focus is engagement/retention, then growth, then monetization (maybe). We have some ideas on how we might monetize (hint: http://jonathan-kim.com/2014/starting-fires/) but that's not our focus at this time.

Very good point. But I'd argue that most customers start off as "users". Sure - some people show up for the first time and whip out their credit cards - but when you're starting that small your best (early) customers will be ones you convert to paid out of the beta.

Just looked at ProductHunt - it's not really in a generally usable state, is it? There's no way to comment, no way to submit new products (even of it'd go through moderators first). It seems that the only thing one can do is to Logout :-/

What gives? What am I missing?

On the about page:

To seed the community with thoughtful discussion and quality content, Product Hunt is limited to a few select contributors while in beta. Invites will become available as the product and community mature.

Sorry it's not incredibly clear. We have some changes to make to the product before we open it to a broader audience. In the meantime, we're slowing whitelisting people, giving them access to post and comment.

So is this limited just to commenters or to people submitting new products as well? I just noticed you do not have a submit product option either.

It's limited to both comments and submissions at the moment.

A smoothly implemented marketing roadmap.

It is an interesting historical narrative of what happened. Probably needs a second post of analysis, comparison/contrast, if I had to do it again I'd... but for what it is, its a good post.

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