4 Inspiring Stories How to Rock Product Hunt and to Attract Investors with Just a Product Video

Wondering how a simple video can check over your product idea and help you to rock Product Hunt? Read these 4 amazing stories from Wannaby, OneSoil, Rocket Body, and Artyline to see that videos work great for product idea validation.

If you are a startup soul, you often need to describe your product in two words in random life situations. The idea needs to sound clear for anyone: potential investors, huge audience during your public speech, or just an old friend.

All these conversations are different, but your goal always rests the same: to convey the idea in just 30–60 seconds while a person listens to you carefully and is not distracted yet. Seems like it’s not too complicated, you just need to rehearse your speech a few times. But in fact, it can be challenging for many reasons:

• Little time for all the information you want to tell.
• The product is too complex and needs to be demonstrated.
• The listener is distracted.
• You can get confused and miss something.

Slon Media actively works with tech and mobile startups. Some of them are looking for investment, some are already stable businesses with new products coming. But all of them regularly pitch their one-million-dollar business ideas to angel investors, company’s partners, or the public at conferences or meetups.

As we have worked with many startups, we are now sure that the best way to give a speech, whether it is an elevator speech, presentation at the conference, or chat in a Facebook messenger, is to use video to describe your product at its best. The video appeared to be the most effective, clear, and straightforward way of pitching an idea.

Video presentation, or a product video, is a short dynamic video (usually from 30 to 90 seconds) that tells the audience the value and main features of your product.

Five reasons to create a product video for your idea:

1. It is fast, intuitive, and easy to understand. Believe us, any, even the most complex, technology, or idea can be easily explained in a short video.
2. It never gets lost or misses anything unlike a person might do.
3. It is presentable. Cliched PowerPoint slides have no chance against dynamic product videos that can be easily shown on either a big screen or a mobile phone.
4. It is useful for marketing. Videos can be used on Product Hunt, in the social media accounts or other kinds of ads.
5. It saves you money …

Wait, the video can save me money? Here the most interesting starts.

In the product video, you can easily show all the product features. You can even tell about the features that have not been implemented yet. Or even show the product that doesn’t exist at all by creating its video prototype.

Why would you spend months of your time and thousands of dollars on product development when you can make a single promotional video that shows potential investors or users the final product and explains its value?

Now the product flow with the promo video can be the following:

You create a video → show it to the investor or promote it on social networks → you collect clients’ feedback → you work further knowing that the audience needs your product.

The cost of one product video for IT companies and startups recently created by Slon Media varies from $4,000 to $8,000. Also, you can add up about $2,000 — $4,000 for various promotions and ads to plan your budget.

For this money, a startup can get evident feedback and reaction from the audience, investors, and the market without developing a final version of the product. It’s not difficult to see the benefits in terms of time and money.

Let’s look at some particular cases when product videos helped the entire business. The first one is about saving resources.

Case №1. Artyline: first video, then product

Product: Artyline is a product that uses augmented reality to create mockups of user interfaces based on sketches drawn on paper.

The challenge for Slon Media: create a product video (60–90 seconds) that would show the value and the main features of the product, in particular recognizing graphic elements using AR technology.

The most interesting part is that at the time of video production not all product features were implemented. The goal of the video was to attract foreign investors and have a nice start on Product Hunt.

The concept of the video is quite simple: it focuses on graphics as it’s the best way to demonstrate the product features as if they have already been developed and implemented.

The project with the product video was published on Product Hunt and resulted in:

• 1100+ upvotes.
• 100+ publications on social media.
• 🥈#2 AR product of the Year (2019 Golden Kitty Award).
• And most important, the company raised money in seed funding.

Sounds great indeed. A video uploaded in the right place at the right time might work. The goal was achieved and the closed first round of investments became the main indicator of the effectiveness of our work.

Case №2. Wannaby — $2 million for a successful presentation

Wannaby has become popular by developing its AR app for sneaker selection, raising $2 million from investment companies Bulba Ventures and Haxus, and partnering with Gucci. How did they manage to achieve all this within just one year?

Wannaby technology: computer vision and rendering makes it possible for users via their smartphone camera to try on clothes from online stores, find out how they look in reality. So, how can you talk about this product without demonstrating how it works? And what if there is no ready-to-show product at all?

Slon Media started to work with Wannaby before they created their AR sneaker technology. Their first idea was the Wanna Nails app. The idea of the app was to allow customers to try on nail polish with AR. All you needed to do was to point the camera at your nails, choose a color, and see the result right on the screen.

After the Wanna Nails app was ready, we created a product video. The launch at Product Hunt was very successful: the app got 1200+ upvotes, the prize for Product of the Week, and also became the best AR Product of the Year 2019 at Golden Kitty Award. However, the first results showed that the app wouldn’t fly as high as the developers expected.

“As it turned out later, the nail polish market is not very large. If we had collected feedback from the audience and market before actually developing the product, we would have saved several months and probably some money”.

Sergey Arkhangelsky, co-founder of Wannaby

After that, the Wannaby team had brainstormed several new ideas for AR applications. For example, they wanted to develop Wanna Rings which would allow users to try on rings. Slon Media even made a demo product video for the app.

But soon the company rejected this ring idea in favor of another — the Wanna Kicks app, a virtual sneaker fitting room. The app was supposed to allow people to try on shoes using their smartphone camera before placing an order in the online store. This time, the creators, taught by previous experience, decided not to rush into the development.

We found a way to test our idea without spending too much time and money on app development. At the very beginning, we made a video showing how the Wanna Kicks app might look. The video was presented to brands and retailers as a prototype of the idea. As the feedback was positive, we decided to work on developing this AR sneaker fitting technology.

Sergey Arkhangelsky, co-founder of Wannaby

The challenge for Slon Media: demonstrate the features of technology that doesn’t exist yet.

The project was published on Product Hunt and the company got the next results:

• 950+ upvotes.
• 🥇The Winner at the 2019 Golden Kitty Award — AR Product of the Year.
• 240,000 monthly app downloads.

Now Wanna Kicks is the main product of the company. The large shoe sellers are interested in the technology. Yes, the team had to test several app ideas, make some mistakes. But one way or another, a lot of time and money was saved, including through our product videos and early feedback that the team got before developing the app.

Case №3. Rocket Body: conquering Kickstarter

Product: Rocket Body is an AI fitness tracker for Apple Watch suggesting you the optimal time for training.

Status: the product was not developed yet, it was required to raise $30 thousand at Kickstarter.

The challenge for Slon Media: to create a video prototype for a successful Kickstarter launch. The video was supposed to show all the app features and functionality and explain the technology in an emotional and motivating way so that the user would want to “buy” a non-existent product right now.

Kickstarter and Product Hunt results:

• $70 thousand was raised instead of $30 thousand.
• 770+ upvotes on Product Hunt.
• 🥇Winner of the 2018 Golden Kitty Award — Health & Fitness Product of the Year.

And this is another proof of how effective a video presentation can be when you are looking for investments. Our team is convinced that today this is one of the best-performing ways to raise money on various crowdfunding platforms.

Case №4. OneSoil: a complex tech product

OneSoil is an interactive map that provides agricultural information on EU and US fields and crops. It is an effective tool for farmers and agronomists, but it is quite difficult for an average user to understand the usefulness and usability of this solution.

The challenge for Slon Media: to create a video presentation that will describe difficult things in a simple easy-to-understand way.

Product Hunt results:

• 1500+ upvotes.
• 🥇Winner of 2018 Golden Kitty Award — AI & Machine Learning Product of the Year.
• Dozens of publications in the media.
• About 300 offers to cooperate, useful comments, and kind words.

OneSoil is a great example of how a complex and niche product becomes understandable and interesting to a wide audience with a simple video. Even Artemy Lebedev (popular designer in Russia) could not resist and left his admiring review on OneSoil solution.

Case №5. Your Amazing Product

Your idea can create a new rock-star case:)

At SLON Media, we have many more successful cases of rocking at Product Hunt but the idea of promo video already seems clear. So, to summarize:

If you are:

• A startup.
• Looking for investment.
• Considering launching on Product Hunt or Kickstarter.

Or you are:

• A tech company and already successful business.
• Looking for new opportunities or planning to launch a new product.
• Thinking about the best way to tell potential partners and clients about your product.

Then re-read five reasons why a product video is exactly what you need:

• It’s fast, intuitive, and easy to understand.
• It never misses anything.
• It is presentable.
• It is useful for marketing.
• It saves you money.

And don’t forget to check out our offer for IT companies, and let’s cooperate to make video content work for your business.