How Product Hunt Helped Me Grow A List Of 12,989,483,288+ Valuable Subscribers And Generate 220k+ In Sales In Less Than 20 Minutes Without Having To Write A Single Line Of Code And Also Taught Me These 5+ Startup Lessons From My Mistakes About Being A Product Manager in 2016 on Meerkat
**Update: I’ve decided this blog post has sufficient traffic to begin monetizing its user base. I will slowly begin rolling out sponsored ads every 3–4 sentences. Thank you. — Matt, Founder of this article
The Idea
I looked down at my Apple SmartWatch. It was 3:32pm — Pacific time…because I live in Silicon Valley.
I thought to myself:
What can I do in the next 20 minutes that’ll bring me exponential ROI and bring those around me exponential value without having to worry about KPIs or APIs or PHPs or getting a real job.
And then it hit me:
I’ll partake in an extremely successful coding Hackathon in my quaint apartment in Silicon Valley where I live with 7 other serial entrepreneurs such as myself.
I dug into my Moleskine and grabbed the latest idea I’d written down:
The Name
Before I could hack this together, I needed a name.
I read 83 articles saved on Pocket for inspiration. But for some reason, articles such as 17 And A Half Ways To Become A Morning Person didn’t help me think of a name.
So I drank a lot of coffee and thought. The name had to be simple. Something people can wrap their heads around. Something that has nothing to do with the product but everything to do with how cool it is.
And then it hit me:
Water
Nearly everyone knows what water is. And it’s one word. Perfect.
But then I realized that there are way too many vowels in the word water, and not enough R’s.
And then it hit me:
Watrrr
The MVP
Now that I had the name figured out I was pretty much done. All I had to do was buy the domain and email some friends about my new startup:
The Results
The next 72 hours were crazy.
Watrrr got a lot of tweets and retweets and mentions and re-mentions. This resulted in tons of unique and one-of-kind pageviews to the site, which resulted in 12,989,483,288+ subscribers. Here’s a screenshot of Watrrr’s traffic on Google Analytics:
The Lessons Learned
This was an amazing experience that not only brought me a lot of money and success and new friends, but also taught me a lot of lessons about how to be a startup entrepreneur….
Lesson #1: Culture = people
Ping pong tables and bean chairs will only get you so far. You need to have real people to build culture. You can’t just buy a ping pong table and some rackets and a few cool chairs. You need actual human beings. Table tennis and a bunch of comfy seating just isn’t enough.
Lesson #2: Execution matters
Ideas are great. But we all have ideas. Without executing them, your idea won’t become a startup. Do you think Uber became Uber because the co-founder of Uber and the other co-founder of Uber said “We have a great idea and it’s called Uber!”. No, they actually went and did Uber. And that’s why Uber exists now.
Lesson #3: Fail, and fail often
Failing is really good. Because the more you fail, the more people will know you’re a serial entrepreneur who does startups. And then you can write Medium blog posts about your mistakes and that’s how you become successful.
Lesson #4: Drop out of school
If you drop out of school, people will know you’re a serial entrepreneur who does startups. And then you can write Medium blog posts about dropping out of school and that’s how you become successful.
Lesson #5: Do what you love
Watch a lot of motivational videos and read a lot of motivational blog posts that tell you to do what you love. Then write your own blog posts about doing what you love. On Medium. And That’s how you become successful.
Written, built and curated by Matt Sydeworks
If this brought you value — and was valuable to you — please click the green heart 💚 below so I can become successful.
