What I Learned From Product Hunt Launch — Startup Week 26, 27
I was preparing for this day almost for a year. The shiny day of the Product Hunt Launch. There are so many forums advocating for the perfect launch day. You need to make a gif. You need to promote it to as many people as possible. You need to message the core existing users for vote. You need to start networking for the launch day.
As an engineer, I never learned this wizardry of marketers. This perfect launch plan seemed so impossible.
Overdetermined by perfectionism, I kept pushing the launch date over and over for the fear of adding more features and persuading the cleaner design.
What finally got this launch going was not myself but someone else.
A hunter Craig stumbled upon the Firefox plugin, and he decided to go ahead with the launch on Product Hunt. It came under my nose only when a bot salesman emailed me to bumped up my votes therefore boosting its visibility. My impression at the time was, ok, this is a new type of sales pitch, tricking me on Product Hunt. But just in case, I went in to look up the link shared in the email. Wow, it is actually there. That was 15 hours after the project was shared.
As much as I felt grateful for the hunt, I was not ready. The project was not ready. The logo shared was not right and images pulled were terribly outdated.
I heard before that you can tell Product Hunt team to take down your project saying it is not ready. But, what the heck, launching was in my todo list for so long. Let’s get going with it.
At the end of the period, Kaffae has received 149 votes.
Here are some of the things I’ve done in launch
Social Network Sharing
I messaged my close tech and marketing friends if they can give upvotes. They are about 10 on both Facebook (mostly) and LinkedIn. I also shared the post on my timeline on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
I also shared my Twitter followers who also follow Product Hunt if they could possibly help with the upvote. The messages were about 50. That was about it.
I honestly thought it would settle around 20 upvotes altogether. But upvote kept going up! My guess is after 10 upvote threshold the algorithm exposes the project a lot more.
Change Tags/Images
Since Craig included me as a marker (I have no idea how that mechanism works), I could edit the photos and taglines after a while. The tag line came right from the Firefox extension. I admit that tag line was outdated and was not sharp enough. I updated the tagline, description, and added my comment reintroducing the project.
The commenting seemed like the standard format in Product Hunt to boast your project. I included my background story, how other people have been using the product for over a year, and a feature list in a bullet format. Also, I made this intro in the reply to the hunter’s thread. But one of my friends pointed out that I should leave a message. In fact, if you browse the post from mobile, nested comments will not show up. Make sure to leave a comment on the top thread.
Here are what happened
Overloaded Server
On the second day of the share, I woke up with a complaint from the user with 404 website. That was a beautiful way to wake up. More effective than 2 shots of espresso.
It looked like the server overload. The app got killed as a result. I instantly turned it back up. But I cant imagine how many potential users had left because of this situation. That was a big Dev Op lesson for me. It was interesting also that the load peaked at 3am EST. That means the many of Product Hunt users reside in Europe region — another interesting lesson here was that Kaffae appeals to many of non-English audience.
Overhwhelming Congratulation
I have received so many congratulations messages as a result. That was a totally unexpected outcome. It came from mostly loose ties from Twitter. I was so happy to hear so many positivities all at once. I promised every one of those supporters that I will be there for your launch time.
On top of that, I received messages from venture capitalist in LinkedIn. They specialize in Ed Tech industry. And Kaffae fit their potential portfolio right on. Although after exchanging conversation, Kaffae seems at the stage not ready for their investment. Nor I was thinking of taking investment at the moment. But that was an interesting industry validation.
Takeaways
I’m grateful for this outcome from being hunted to positive messages I’ve received. But more than anything, I am happy I can get it off my long time todo list. Now I can finally focus on other stuff like pitching journalists or writing a blog.
I have a few takeaways from the launch:
- Don’t stress over Product Hunt launch. It doesn’t make or kill your project. It’s a great place to receive product feedback with open minded people (but not the only).
- Be prepared to launch on Product Hunt 4–5 times. InVision launched 55 times in Product Hunt. And I’m planning on doing the same. Given that you are sharing the major update, that’s totally acceptable practice. That continuous launch mentality helps those who suffer from perfectionism.
- There’s a reputation snowball in marketing. Especially in forum, the first 10 upvotes are the hardest. And then, it significantly improves your visibility. That hardest push is up to your strategy.
Cheers!
