Startup Launch — Part 1: Product Hunt
Do you have a launch plan for your MVP?
If you are an average entrepreneur you might put together a checklist or even a full project plan on how to launch to different marketing channels — A go to market strategy.
“We are going to launch a beta version with features X,Y,Z and reach out to customers via social media and google ads “ — Random Founder 🤠
However, this approach reminds more of a full product rollout than an MVP.
🔔 Reminder: An MVP is a feedback collection mechanism. It’s not a finished product.
So, the key question in your launch strategy is how to collect feedback and where❓
For an MVP, collecting feedback is as important as selling to make sure you solve the most painful problem for the target customer to generate extremely high satisfaction → The foundation of product-market fit.
One of the first places that come to mind for collecting feedback for MVPs is the place where early adopters like to spend their free time — ProductHunt.
ProductHunt is very popular in the startup community, but still not mainstream enough.
I know a few dozen startups that have never launched on ProductHunt because they didn’t know about it or they didn’t see the value and why it is useful in the earliest stages of a company.
In essence, ProductHunt is a product for crowdsourcing new products and giving early access to new products to the fanatic community of startup aficionados.
Setting Expectations
ProductHunt could easily be perceived as a regular marketing channel, and when compared with other marketing channels it doesn't look very powerful.
However, ProductHunt wasn’t made for lead-generation and generating customers for your startup.
It’s a community feedback channel — a tool for product discovery 🕵🏾♂️
While it might create a few customers, its primary purpose is helping you get exposed to a community of early adopters which can help you achieve the following:
- Get feedback about “features” and the value (or lack of it);
- Get answers to polls to understand the problem space much better;
- Discover similar products that might be direct/indirect competitors;
- Measure actual interest in your product ahead of the marketing launch;
- Create trust, brand awareness, and a bit of virality;
- (If you are lucky) You can get a badge for the product of the day, week or month🏅and put it on your site as a trust factor.
ProductHunt might not assemble your exact target audience, but still, it’s important to understand that the kind of innovators and early adopters that linger around PH are the kinds of people that try and use hundreds of new products across different verticals.
Innovators and early adopters will try your half-baked MVP and give you some nice initial feedback without hating you forever if they come across bugs. 🐛
Launch Example — Hey.com
To understand how PH works, we will analyze the PH launch by Hey.com.
Hey.com is a new kind of e-mail client by 37Signals, launched recently on ProductHunt. A G-mail killer, if you like.
Why did 37Signals, a SaaS company with 3.3 million users, decide to launch a new product on PH?
Wasn’t it easier to send a mass e-mail to their customers?
Yes. But PH is a nice feedback collection channel with a unique community eager to try new things. Sending an e-mail or marketing on social media would not generate the effects they wish for because the product is not yet ready for mass marketing.
While it wasn’t the best ProductHunt launch in history, it is very visible that the founders understand very well the purpose of ProductHunt.
A few things that I really liked on their PH page:
- Video walkthrough of the product demonstrating features;
- Very authentic, real, warm content and copy;
- Hunter+Makers engaged in the comments;
- Relevant polls in the comments for product discovery;
- They got a badge and bragging rights as the product of the day.🥇
Ok, but did they get any traffic and conversions on their website?
Yes. Every PH product page has a link to the website or app.
The hey.com website reminds me of the internet in 1997 when full-text websites were still popular.
The website is a personal note intended to send an authentic message and create a connection with the visitor ✅
Hey! It almost feels like I got an e-mail — very clever!
This is an efficient and simple way to communicate product differentiation and position the product against Google, Outlook etc.
Clicking on the signup button opens an invite-only page with a request to give the founders even more feedback via e-mail.
Yes. It’s all about collecting feedback, and not about selling and converting.
All of this reminds a bit of the famous Buffer.com launch, but in 2020 you don’t just launch a landing page with a subscribe feature.
In 2020 you launch on ProductHunt and connect to your landing page from there.
It is humbling to see a company with 3+ mil. active users launch a new product like this, questioning every hypothesis like they are a small startup starting from scratch, and asking every user for feedback.
But don’t worry. Launching on PH is only the first step.
I believe that we will see a more aggressive marketing strategy for Hey.com very soon after a few iterations based on the feedback they have collected through this initial product hunt launch and the landing page.
Mass marketing starts when the product is ready.
Final Thoughts
If you believe your product is perfect and done, skip ProductHunt and launch on regular marketing channels and start selling your product to the masses!
However, most products are far from perfect in version 1 and you might waste money and your customer acquisition costs could explode.
If you have a healthy dose of self-doubt and understand the value of product discovery and user research — launch on PH and get exposed to some real feedback before you roll out to the masses. Refine your product and then do more aggressive marketing.
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We offer product management, design, development, and investment services to support entrepreneurs and startups towards product success.
If you want to work with us on your startup feel free to contact us at — https://ministryofprogramming.com/contact/
