The Product Hunt Effect — Eric Willis
Eric Willis is a serial entrepreneur and the #1 ranked hunter (and moderator) on Product Hunt. He’s currently writing a book called The Product Hunt Effect: How community driven startups are changing the way products are built, launched, and distributed.
He’s been building tech products for nearly 16 years and his projects have been featured in Mashable, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Pando Daily, and several other publications. He’s traveled to 30+ countries to inspect startup scenes and also work with founders (as an advisor) on building new web/mobile applications. We can discuss anything you would like to know about Product Hunt, building products (and teams), market trends, and anything else related to startups.
Shameless plug before we start the AMA. Please support the Kickstarter campaign for my book: The Product Hunt Effect.
Thanks! Bonus reward is a virtual hug!
So I’m a long-time entrepreneur, top hunter, and moderator at Product Hunt. I’m also writing a book called The Product Hunt Effect: How community driven startups are changing the way products are built, launched, and distributed. I’m sure many of you have lots of questions about Product Hunt and I’ll answer to the best of my ability. So ask me anything! Just a warning. I’m traveling at the moment and I’m on a really bad connection. I don’t type slowly..it might just seem that way
Q. What was the inspiration for the book? Obviously you have the knowledge, since you’re a core part of the team, but was there a specific reason you decided to go this route? — Ray Hernandez
I’ve been working with makers in various channels for several months. I’ve been learning about their successes and failures and began to notice some trends. I’ve been sharing those in Maker Hunt and other places and began to run into some issues with all the requests. It just didn’t scale. So I thought the best way to scale would be to get these ideas in a book format. I wanted to share a framework on how to build communities and how to leverage them.
To the second part.. I’m just a moderator and hunters so I’m not really part of the core team so I think that makes it a bit easier for me to pursue this.
Q. Will the ebooks be interactive for tablets (eg iBooks author)? — Jeff Needles
I don’t know if you know Nathan (who built the first version of Product Hunt). He’s working on a new mobile platform for ebooks. It’s very interactive and I’m hoping he will have the beta ready so that I can use it to launch the ebook. If not, I’ll still create interactive versions of the ebooks.
Q. Talking about kickstarter ☺. When it started, it was easy to boostrap projects there. Then it got more and more “professional”, requiring consequent resources to make appealing videos, most notably. Do you think something of the sort could happen to Product Hunt when it gets bigger (requiring consequent budget to reach home page), and if yes, how could it be prevented? — Olivier Mekki
I don’t think that’s the major issue. I think the biggest problem is that people are often not prepared to launch on PH. They don’t do the small things like create a custom landing page or create a form to extract an email address from the visitors. It’s a huge wasted opportunity. They then iterate and fix the early issues and two months later they feel the need to get featured on PH again. I think a lot more planning should go into being ready to launch on PH
At the the same time, I know people are just looking to get validation.
Q. What gave you the idea? what does a success look like for you here? — Erik Torenberg
Helping on Product Hunt, Maker Hunt, Maker Success, and then other product-related communities puts me in contact with a lot of makers. Many face the same problems and also have lots of concerns about how to not only launch on Product Hunt but how to best leverage their launch so that they don’t have just a few days in the limelight and then flame out. So I’ve been helping many with their post-launch plans and had some success. I wanted to share what I’ve learned with others. I just want to share these case studies and insights. If I can get a good book written and people can learn something from it, I’ve succeeded.
Q. In your years of making products and working in tech, what books have had the most influence on your approach, ideation to build to marketing, anything ☺ and also, what books have you seen have the most impact on other founders from the companies you’ve worked with/alongside? — Greig Cranfield
Blue Ocean Strategy is a great one that comes up often. It’s about opening up uncontested market space.
A lot of people are still taking about The Hard Thing about Hard Things because it’s so practical and not just theoretical jargon.
I think you should also look at Peter Drucker books or even pick up The Daily Drucker.
Q. Since you do so much awesome stuff for free — why not keep this free (at least the digital versions)? — Jeff Needles
I’ve thought about that a lot actually. However, there is some validation that comes with knowing people will pay for something. I do hope to release something related to that for free (thinking of a possible course)
Q. Obviously you’re all about helping people & other’s products, but do you have any products of your own in the hopper? (other than the upcoming badass book) — Ray Hernandez
I did an interview today with Josh from The Daily Hunt and he asked the same question. I’ve had “ideas”, but I’m not working on anything into a find a problem that I feel uniquely qualified to solve and that I’m passionate about. I’ve done enough startups for the wrong reasons. So this requires a bit of patience.
Q. Besides giving visibility and traffic to the products themselves, what do you see as the best side-effect of Product Hunt for makers, hunters, or regular users? Are there any interesting effects that happen when a product is launched, that exists outside of the expected traffic to products? whether that’s fundraising opportunities, job-related finds, etc. — Marc Rosa
Yes. I’ve known makers who have gotten VC inquiries and then gone on to get funded with just a few weeks. Some startups have had engineers submit their resumes solely based on seeing the product on PH.
So people are hiring immediately after being featured on PH and getting lots of inbound from that. I also think PH can be a huge validator for the press and that exposure can be the gift that keeps on giving.
Q. To get all Tim Ferris on you…what is your daily routine? You seem to always be online…and you’re a big contributor to so many things…do you sleep? — Ray Hernandez
I spend a lot of time in Slack in a couple of communities I run. I’ve doing multiple interviews per day I spend a lot of time on Skype… hours per day now. And the rest of the time is in email and then reading books. It’s very basic right now because a lot of just research for the book
Q. I know there will be a whole book on that but, what is the most important piece of advice you’d give to makers? The one thing we should keep in mind all the time? — Maxime Pico
Always try to get to root of the problem you’re trying to solve. Also be talking to your users to get a better understanding of why they use your problem. Try to find patterns between those users and solve the one or two major problems REALLY well.
You need to find one or two things to really nail. That’s your stake in the ground. Everything starts there
Q. I’m currently writing an article about PH, one point being that PH is a social network, and not just a website directory like in the early days of the internet. Do you think PH has a post-launch community effect, like it could exist in incubators, past the networking opportunities with engineers and VCs you described? — Olivier Mekki
I think you can see that in the PH Meetups. That’s taking the community-feel of the site to the offline world. So yes, I think you can see that.
Q: Is there a tool you could not live without? Like a productivity hack? Or and app? — Maxime Pico
Right now it’s definitely Slack. It’s a major part of my workflow now. A hack: I’m committed to inbox zero so that means I’ll generally respond to emails very quickly to keep it clean. That almost means I don’t give my email out as much too. So email isn’t a time killer for me.
Q. Are you a podcast guy? You have any non-popular podcast that are great about products? — Ray Hernandez
I’m not a major podcast guy. Do you know about Mixergy? I’m not sure if it’s really “popular”.. it’s known though. It’s awesome.
Q. What is the latest Hunt or Maker that really made an impression on you? How do you analyze how good a product is? — Maxime Pico
Can I give you one that’s not hunted yet? but will be soon?
So there is this app called Blab. Imagine Google Hangout done right or if Meerkat was built to work with Slack channels but you could stream multiple people at one time.
It’s so cool…so cool! We even held an AMA with it today… and people that are watching can comment or jump in and out of the stream… it’s really sweet
It’s so nice. I love the app. You’ll see it next week and I’m not a big user of livestreaming apps but it’s so personal, intimate that it just works
Do you think community driven startups need a leader, and how would you “scale” leadership if so, given the fact there are human limits in communicating with others ? — Marwann
Yes. PH is a prime example of that. Ryan was the earlier driver. To grow and also keep the quality up, you need others to buy in and help you lead. It’s the only way to scale
So the entire PH team drives the community and then moderators and then other heavy users mimic them…
Q. Why do you think meerkat, periscope and blab has success while livestream and ustream got only moderate traction? — Olivier Mekki
I think a lot that has to do with smartphone penetration and increased bandwidth. It’s just technically easier for everyone to have a great experience. Plus.. people are just more comfortable being on camera now.
Q. Do you think the current state of the startup scene and the whole unicorn thing are healthy? Like are you seeing people building products for the right reasons still or just focusing too much on building something that will get funding and cash out? — Greig Cranfield
It’s a cycle. People are being a bit greedy now and there is a lot of money in the market. At the same time, people are building real businesses.
Slack’s revenue is growing at a fast clip… look at Zenefits.. maybe one of the fastest growing ever
So it’s not like the late 90s
All the wealth brings in people are chasing quick bucks but eventually the window always closes for pretenders.
I’ve seen people passionately hacking away at awesome products just because they want to make something cool without much thought to getting rich quick. I like those people. too romantic of an idea maybe but being at collision recently and hearing some people say they just made something in the hope that it gets bought out before even hitting the market was an eye opener for me. It’s totally understandable but i just like the idea of people trying to solve problems and help people not just $$$ in their eyes. Product hunt gives a platform for people to launch those types of products to a community that (from what I’ve seen) feel the same which is awesome ☺ so good work. — Greig Cranfield
Q. How do you “know” that something will work? What are the questions you ask yourself when you discover a new startup or a new product? — Maxime Pico
I don’t always know, but sometimes the signs are clear. Slack was IRC for everyone else and it was well-built. So it was solving a real problem and was extremely well-built. That’s going to succeed.
Let’s use an example like Meerkat. They have a competitor that’s right there with them and they have resource and distribution advantages so we don’t know if they will succeed. It’s all about the vision and execution of the team.
Q. What do you think is the dumbest thing people do…when they are “trying” to start a community based product? — Ray Hernandez
Make out “personas” (imaginary users) and built based on that and not find early real possible users immediately.
So they’re just guessing.
The first thing you should do it talk to real people and try to get validation.
Q. You seem to bring up “finding problems” and “talking to users” a lot, these things are directly linked to empathy. So my question is, how did you develop empathy in order to better understand the problems and ask the right questions? Was there something critical you understood on the way? — Maxime Pico
I’ve read a ton of business books (maybe 1000 ..lots of biographies) and been an entrepreneur for nearly 20 years. When you look at most startup stories… at the “genesis moment”, it’s almost always rooted in solving someone’s problem. And then intimately understanding it.
Look at Fred Smith (Fedex) or King Gillette(Gillette).. they literally lived the problems and worked on them for years before anyone took them seriously
So I think you have to CARE to really solve a difficult problem or you’ll give up before the breakthrough comes
You have to care about the problem or the people who have the problem.
Q. Regarding having user feedback, I’ve heard a developer saying recently that launching invite only beta was fading and it was better to launch directly and iterate quickly. Beta seems so much important to me, what’s your vision about that? — Olivier Mekki
I agree with the developer who said that to you UNLESS you’re working on a mission-critical problem. You’re not going to launch early and often if your building switch software for data centers.
If it’s consumer-based and you’re not handling financial data, release it.
You can still order the book on Kickstarter:
After having spent 1000+ hours talking to makers, I began to notice a pattern in the type of information that makers were seeking to help them become better entrepreneurs. I began sharing this information individually, but that just didn’t scale. So I began talking to people in these communities about a better delivery method and the overwhelming response was “Please put this in a book!”.
It’s important for people to know about these success stories: How Flatbook launched on Product Hunt and added 125k to their funnel, how Book in a Box converted Product Hunt visitors into 75k in revenue in one month, how Treeling had nearly 10,000 developers sign upfor their service in 48 hours, or how some makers are turning side projects into startups just because of being featured on Product Hunt. More crucially, it’s important to know how the techniques and methodology used to harness the community on Product Hunt and in other places so that you can have an awesome launch and grow your startup.
I’ll give you the behind the scene details and framework so that you can replicate some of this success. Makers have complained about the lack of in-depth case studies that will actually teach them key techniques, ideology, tools, and other tips. The Product Hunt Effect will fill that void. Finally, the community we’ll build together is equally important as you’ll hopefully be connected to 1000+ other makers, entrepreneurs, developers, marketers and other tech professionals so that you can learn together and support each other. This is a movement.
