How to launch on Product Hunt

I speak to founders surprisingly frequently about how to launch on Product Hunt. I don't actually think PH launches are all that valuable if they're not your target customers, but getting awareness from tech folk and VCs are useful.

So I figured I'd put what I normally share publicly, so it can be useful to others.

As a caveat I’m not an expert in Product Hunt. I’m a semi-frequent visitor, and I’ve put stuff on there before, so take my experience as “someone who knows a bit but not everything”.

Here’s the advice I give founders:

1/ Take it seriously: If you want a good result, you need to do it well. Don’t throw it together last minute, be prepared.

2/ Timing: The rankings reset at midnight Pacific Time, which is around 8am in the UK. Post shortly after that, and get your first votes quickly.

3/ Use personal connections to get your first votes: You “aren’t allowed” to ask people to upvote your product, but that's fine. If you let people know that you've launched, they'll know what to do. And if your messaging is private there's no way for Product Hunt to know anyway. Just don't be spammy.

If you’re early stage you've got to do more than Twitter. Personal emails, LinkedIn DMs, WhatsApps are more powerful at getting direct action in a timely way. And make sure to let people know ahead of time - it’s way more likely you’ll get timely help than if you surprise them on the day. There’s a rumour that you’re not allowed to link directly to your product’s post, but that’s not true.?

These tactics will get you the initial boost into the “featured products” where strangers can discover it.

4/ Get your media in order: Look at the top apps, they all have decent screenshots, and maybe a video. Get yourself these too. This is to attract and get votes from people you don’t know, which will determine your final ranking position.?

5/ Engage with the community: The more “real” you can be the better. Most people treat the comments like a victory parade, but if you can solicit real questions from the community, you’ll get better engagement. If nothing else, do the victory parade and pretend to be flattered and surprised that someone ‘hunted’ you.

6/ Give something to the community: A discount or whatever always seems to go down well. You can try to make it variable (e.g. 50% off if we land on #1, 25% if we’re #2 etc) to try to get more votes. Probably worth checking if this is against the rules, but as far as I can see it’s not.?

7/ Try not to worry about it: Successful launches can be useful, but they’re just one launch and they won’t likely be this big turning point in your company history. So if it doesn’t work out, don’t worry about it. Take the learnings for your next launch.

Was this useful? Is there anything I’ve missed? Would love to know any thoughts you have, and how I can be broadly helpful to the startup community.