15 ms·

How Product Hunt really works

695 points by brw12 11y ago

brw12 11y ago
Interested in your thoughts, HN. I tried to write from a place of compassion and not be all haterating.
- bronson 11y ago
  Matter-of-fact writing and great images. Very well done. And I think you've just made Product Hunt insiders a lot more popular...
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Fair enough but https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*reUE0OYzV119seobZYQ45Q.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*reUE0OYzV119seobZY... really feels like the only real takeaway I have from that post.
- jdp23 11y ago
  I thought you struck a good tone while pointing out the insider advantage and how everybody seems to take its existence for granted in their descriptions of how to succeed. It certainly didn't come across to me as haterating.
exolymph 11y ago
Apparently I'm not cynical enough, because I was surprised by this. Does Reddit's front page work the same way?
- minimaxir 11y ago
  No. Reddit's front page ranking has no hidden metagaming from the mods. (The most they can do is hide it)
  - siegecraft 11y ago
    Which is probably why certain topics get swiftly disappeared from the front page. Although I'm sure there is/was work underway on tools to automate this.
    - minimaxir 11y ago
      Most large subreddits run AutoModerator to pre-filter submissions. In terms of submissions getting to the front page and disappearing, that's a different issue entirely than insider privilege (namely, highly selective rule enforcement). The subreddit /r/undelete captures these incidents.
    - finnn 11y ago
      AutoModerator, by far the most popular reddit moderation automation solution, was integrated with reddit about 8 months ago[0], making it "official". It has lots of options, i haven't played with it that heavily [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/30z70k/reddit_change_automoderator_is_now_integrated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/30z70k/reddit_ch...
  - myth_buster 11y ago
    I believe you can check the ones that were dropped in the "Undelete" sub. https://www.reddit.com/r/undelete https://www.reddit.com/r/undelete
minimaxir 11y ago
Speaking of "PH is rigged by insiders," it's worth noting that a "top user" is selling a book on how to best pander to the PH userbase: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TP3MFHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1450208665&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX220_SY330_QL65&keywords=product+hunt+book&dpPl=1&dpID=416S3qelIKL&ref=plSrch http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TP3MFHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=... This is an odd racket, to say the least. Re/code wrote a relevant article a few months back (http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup-kingmaker-faces-charges-of-elitism/ http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup-kingma...) about Product Hunt elitism, which I was interviewed for and the response from the PH team to the article was essentially "haters gonna hate." It's disappointing that nothing has changed since then, and arguably, things have gotten worse.
- exolymph 11y ago
  Wow. I'd be fascinated to know how well this book sells.
  - jldugger 11y ago
    Seems like a 8 dollar add for their promotional services, really.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- shostack 11y ago
  What is a shame about it is that they had a rare opportunity in that they actually had traction and buzz around PH. If they had taken a different attitude and truly tried to make it THE launch platform, they could have done amazing things. They could have democratized a big chunk of it, and still had promoted positions that could generate revenue for them.
  - zabramow 11y ago
    PH can feel a lot like a popularity contest and a SV insider's club, not like a democratization of launch.
ryanSrich 11y ago
It always surprises me when people get bent out of shape when they learn that blogs and forums are rigged to favor a certain group of people. There's A LOT of money to be had and if you think places like Product Hunt, Reddit, HN, etc. aren't all being rigged in some way, you're naive.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I guess the way the world works is that there's a certain amount of meritocracy in any given system, but it only accounts for like 20% of success.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  in other words, somebody's agenda is always being turned into 'reality'.
- minimaxir 11y ago
  There are ways to optimize submissions to Reddit/Hacker News for upvotes, yes. (and I've done a lot of research on both services.) However, I would say that neither is rigged; that is, moderators don't control what is seen on the front page. (Although in the case of HN, moderators have bumped up good posts which have not been upvoted, which is a positive intervention) Product Hunt, as noticed in the article, requires shennanigans to be successful. The real problem here is that PH presents itself as a meritocracy when it really isn't, and it has mislead naive entrepreneurs into thinking a given product is "good" when it truly isn't.
  - quintin 11y ago
    Correction: HN mods often flag posts down. Almost on a very regular basis. They do this for the larger good.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      As far as I know that's not mods, that's regular users. minimaxir is talking about the small repost-bump that some posts get.
lsniddy 11y ago
One of my products was featured on product hunt in it's early days (no idea who submitted it). I remember thinking then - "well, cool, but people looking for new products are not really my target market." Has anyone seen any value come from PH?
- mladenkovacevic 11y ago
  I imagine it's mostly for companies looking to attract investors, not customers.
  - petercooper 11y ago
    Maybe it has replaced TechCrunch in this role.
- LCDninja 11y ago
  Same experience as you, someone I don't know posted my app to product hunt. I have no idea what would motivate them to do this (I'm not a product hunt user.) The reason I noticed was because I was searching for the reason that app sales spiked. Real value? Sales increased a few thousand percent for one day.
- tomasien 11y ago
  The only thing that bothers me about PH is one of my products was one of the most upvoted products of all time there in the early days, but I didn't submit it. It would likely get that status again (it's quite popular among the PH type crowd) if posted now when they have 100x the audience, but it can't be posted again. I find that unfortunate, HN lets you repost links after some period of time I believe for 2.0 releases, etc.
  - volaski 11y ago
    I am pretty sure you can resubmit to PH when you have a new version, especially if you had a great run with your first version.
- frankdenbow 11y ago
jbob2000 11y ago
This is how I think Shark Tank and Dragon's Den work too. The "sharks" all parade their new products on TV under the guise of entertainment, and throw in a couple silly/heartwarming ideas and people.
- burkaman 11y ago
  You can find a lot of testimonials from people who have appeared on Shark Tank, and all the ones I've seen say "I was surprised by how real the show is". The only major change is that there's an hour-long pitch/discussion that gets edited down to 5 or 10 minutes of interesting TV. Nothing is scripted, the sharks don't know what's coming, the negotiation is real, etc. I guess it's possible that these people were paid to lie about the show, but it seems like Shark Tank is one of the most realistic reality shows.
  - jbob2000 11y ago
    The ideas aren't mutually exclusive; There can be real people and planted advertisements...
- vogt 11y ago
  Incorrect, at least with Shark Tank. Can't speak to Dragon's Den. I worked for one of the Sharks on their ST accounts. Nothing is staged, it's all regular people who submit their ideas and are selected based on who the network thinks will make for good entertainment (personality, "wow factor" with the product, etc). During filming, the sharks are given an overview of who the person presenting is and what their product is/does. Everything else is organic. The Sharks have no advance knowledge of the products and the deals get made or shut down after due diligence is done after filming. That's not to say that the sharks don't do a huge dog and pony show of promotion around their products, though.
  - ryanSrich 11y ago
    What type of due diligence must a shark or their team do during the show? I imagine these funding offers are just term sheets pending a legit financial review?
michaelbuckbee 11y ago
PH is more like a collaboratively edited magazine where the founders have selected a large group of friends to act as a top level filtration system for "products". Mostly what they're selecting for is "is this of interest to our audience" - of which said audience is currently mostly free tech / designery / social type things (even as they start to add more categories). While it's nice to be featured, it's quite unlikely to bring you a large amount of traffic and/or signups. A submission to a decent sized sub-reddit will likely drive 2x the traffic that ProductHunt will, a submission to BetaList more signups and a front page HN post 10x. If there's a reason to get featured it's to try and get some feedback from the community (if they're your audience) as they tend to be quite helpful.
- pc86 11y ago
  While HN certainly drives a decent amount of traffic (usually), I doubt that it will drive 10x the number of sign-ups as a PH submission, particularly if it's more to the design/social bent.
- brw12 11y ago
  very helpful, thanks.
api 11y ago
PH strikes me as a vanity metric. Does it really get you noticed that much?
- minimaxir 11y ago
  PH is a tautology: in order to get noticed on PH, you need to be noticed by an insider beforehand, which therefore makes the benefit minimal. The benefit of Reddit/HN is that there's a much higher probability of content that would otherwise not be noticed become viral.
- brw12 11y ago
  the community discussions and support might be a bigger deal than the signups. like HN.
volaski 11y ago
In my experience, the OP is correct about one thing, it's waste of time to post on upcoming on PH. However this is nothing compared to how opaque Hacker News is. If your product is novel enough and reach out to these "insiders" beforehand (or even afterhand), I don't think you have trouble getting to the front page on PH, whereas on HN I see tons of people reaching front page by asking for upvotes from friends. The only difference is PH is--ironically--transparent about its opaqueness, whereas HN is opaque about its transparentness. To elaborate, on hacker news everything looks transparent, and to certain degree it is (you can find the raw stream under "new" tab), but the ones that reach the front page are not always there because 100% of the community decided so, there are many hidden things going on in the background that most people don't even know. Whereas all you need to do to get featured on PH is to reach out to these "insiders", to guarantee you reach front page on HN you need to get people to upvote you. I feel that PH is much more democratic than HN since everyone gets same chance whereas on HN the people with already existing audience wins.
- minimaxir 11y ago
  Asking for upvotes does not work on HN, and using shennanigans like mass voting from /newest doesn't work either. (the points register but they will not be used for ranking) Product Hunt, in fairness, has the same do-not-ask-for-upvotes clause in their FAQ, but given the amount of people blatantly asking for upvotes on Twitter (https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&s=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&s=typd) I am doubtful that policy is actually enforced. It's free publicity, after all.
  - brw12 11y ago
    PH's algorithm tries to discount upvotes that seem to be stuffed... eg by counting votes that come from front page more highly. community managers sometimes scold people on twitter for begging upvotes.
  - volaski 11y ago
    Yes theoretically it shouldn't work, but I see it work everyday, you just need to email your friends and tell them not to visit the direct link but go to the front page and find your post and upvote. But anyway my point was exactly this, most people aren't even aware of this "black magic" going on in the background, which is worse than the process being opaque. Because at least on product hunt people know how to hack their way into being featured whereas on hacker news most people don't even realize it's possible. Also my point was not just about asking for upvotes. I was trying to point out how on hackernews if you already have an audience--say your email newsletter subscribers or blog readers--it is likely that your post will go up to the front page. Therefore newbies regardless of how great content they have don't get to play on level field as already famous people. What I found great about PH was you are judged by what you build, not your existing reputation. I'm not saying HN is more corrupt or anything than PH. PH is better at this since HN is more general purpose whereas PH is just about products.
chinathrow 11y ago
TL;DR: it's mostly rigged by some users with privileges.
birken 11y ago
Hacker News is a long-running, open, inclusive startup community that is subsidized by a related business, doesn't sell anything, and has proven time and again to do things good for the entire startup community. Product Hunt is a new, closed, exclusive startup community run by a for-profit company that will eventually have to start selling you something. Not sure why people complain about PH so much... just don't use it. There already is a perfectly good community of startup people out there that has much more incentive to stay "pure" than a for-profit one. Sure, HN isn't perfect, but fundamentally it is always going to be better than any for-profit communities. (And also this obligatory comment: If you want to build a successful company, stop wasting your time browsing startup communities and spend your time talking with users and building your product)
- jl87 11y ago
  HN is equally rigged. The mods regularly change headlines, remove posts, and allow YC companies to post on the front page.
  - minimaxir 11y ago
    1. Headlines are changed to match the article verbatim, or if the article is linkbait, the title is changed to nonlinkbait (the latter might be more frequent case from your submission history) 2. Again, users flag. Rarely moderators remove posts other than that. 3. Those are job ads, which have a set decay time and always start at #6.
    - gearoidoc 11y ago
      I think you're off on 2 and 3 - although I only have anecdata to make me believe so. On point 2: I've often found posts which are gaining traction on the homepage which do not subscribe to the 'scale fast'-centric belief system of YC are pulled. Most recently this one by DHH: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider 3. They're not all job ads. Stripe updates their API and it goes straight to #1? Come on...
throwaway415 11y ago
I was initially really excited to learn about Product Hunt and what it meant to the existing ecosystem: Diversity. An independent contender in the war for eyeballs/voice in the hacking/tech/entrepreneurship community -- how exciting! I would imagine while their motivations might be similar to what YC wants with HN (distribution, influence), they could possibly open up and serve new members in the ecosystem that aren't, can't, or don't want to be a part of the HN/YC pipeline. Building a working group of heterogenous independent sources to serve new and exciting topics is important to breaking out of the echo chamber we so often create for ourselves within tech. I was hoping Product Hunt could bootstrap the entire venture, stay clean, and true to the spirit of a meritocracy. Then they went through YC, and now I see the same "influencers" there as I do here, with the same system in place to promote their own vested interests. It just makes me slightly sad that the pressures of succeeding create collusion among players in this market, thereby perhaps obscuring the potential for new/interesting/different emergent technologies/startups to thrive. Among my peers, over time PH has become less of a community set out to serve the good of the people, and instead has become more of a pipeline for quick sales or testing new ideas, leaving a feeling of what can only be described previously as the "Tech Crunch of Initiation". Product Hunt has essentially supplanted Tech Crunch in the YC/TC relationship of yesteryear, albeit to an even more perilous extent. Products are no longer vetted by working professional journalists, whose obligation should be to the consumer and not the producer, but rather by the very product's investors, advisors, and "insiders". We therefore must ask what is the value-add here? Is it truly a wonder that it proves marginal, and perhaps even detrimental, to the long term success of the startup community as a whole?
tomasien 11y ago
Startup advisors regularly take stakes in the full %'s? Since when? We have tons of advisors none of them have ever asked for a stake.
- shimon 11y ago
  This was an odd assertion in the article. Advisors (excluding those who are also investors) often get some shares, but several percent is ludicrously high for just advice. The expected number is probably closer to 0.1%.
  - tomasien 11y ago
    I can imagine a point for a highly active advisors pre-launch who has certain deliverables, but only then and definitely not more than a point.
- dshanahan 11y ago
  This assertion in the article is where it became clear to me the author just didn't do any research into the marketing channel they were hoping to gain value out of. Most 'straight to the frontpage' hunts come from a product geek submitting a product they found on their own, or via email/tweet etc from the makers. And yeah, pre-launch advisors don't take any equity.
mootothemax 11y ago
Surely if your app's sole source of success is a spending a short amount of time on some website's front page, you have bigger issues with your business strategy? Go back a few years and everyone used to talk about their struggles getting featured on TechCrunch; I didn't believe it was make-or-break back then either.
- desireco42 11y ago
  He is just pointing that game is rigged and a lot of articles promote how egalitarian everything is, how it is meritocracy. As someone also pointed out, there is somewhat similar thing here as well, just, I feel it is more clear what is happening. Yes, it is like TechCrunch :).
- myth_buster 11y ago
  The way I look at is as an opportunity cost for both producers and consumers. In place of a valuable app/product, what the consumers would get is a lemon.
- someear 11y ago
  A big challenge super early companies/products have is getting eyeballs on the product. PH can get you thousands of users with little to no effort. So it's not about your product living or dying from PH, but it can take startups months to get that kind of feedback from users using the product. It won't determine success, but can certainly put you on that path. We ended up being featured on PH's front page after one of these "insiders" found us on twitter, and posted us. Had no affiliation to us. Got hundreds of upvotes, and thousands of users to try our product out. Over time we lost all our PH users, but the feedback from them was awesome, and is likely what has kept us around 6 months later. So not the sole reason, but definitely a significant one.
phantom_oracle 11y ago
Nothing can hurt a well-meaning first-time founder of some useful side-project business then to learn that a non-entity like Product Hunt is a rigged game where the inner circle are simply gaming the system for their friends and people whom they benefit from and will benefit. From "top 3% of coders" to "your product will get 1st spot if you scratch our back with a small slice of the pie or counter-promote our product with yours" to "we will only invest in you if you get referred through an acquittance of ours", the game surely does feel more rigged each day. The upper echelons of tech sure does share more similarities with high-finance then they would like to admit...
- Bjartr 11y ago
  Does it feel more rigged because it is becoming more rigged or because the level of rigging that already exists in the ecosystem is becoming more visible?
  - l33tbro 11y ago
    It's pure deception. PH presents as egalitarian and meritocratic, but that's clearly horseshit. We need the right person to build a more transparent and credible alternative. They've straight-up lost me as a daily visitor.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - AznHisoka 11y ago
      If I was a betting man, I'd bet their daily visitors have shrunk a fair bit the past few months. Who is the type of people who would even visit daily to discover random products that share no theme? Most of them probably are just checking for competitors or journalists looking for a story. Not real actual users. This their downfall.
      - matznerd 11y ago
        I don't think this is true at all, and I would bet the opposite. They are bringing in live chats/podcasts/etc and going outside of their normal demographics. If anything it is similar how reddit used AMAs (by Obama, etc) to expand the reach of the platform to a wider audience.
hoodoof 11y ago
I feel like its a mistake to hide content behind "see all" and arrow right buttons. I feel like people look at what is shown to them and they are willing to scroll down but far fewer people are likely to go to the trouble of pressing a right arrow or "see all" button.
sharkweek 11y ago
I don't visit Product Hunt much, but I do follow their founder on Twitter. He seems like a super well-intentioned person, so I'm surprised to read all of the commentary here on HN. Am I being duped by some Product Hunt scam that I'm completely oblivious to?
- olefoo 11y ago
  No one starts out intending to build a corrupt ecosystem. But when money and it's proxies ( attention, publicity, buzz, etc. ) are flowing around the incentives shift. The people Product Hunt tapped with editorial control were given that power because PH thought they would best serve the needs of their audience that way. And like most such networks it starts off as a relatively egalitarian deal, but rapidly accrues winners and barriers to later entrants. The lesson here is that if the existing networks are closed to you, then you should go ahead and build your own. And then someday you too can be accused of being an evil mastermind ;-)
callmeed 11y ago
> That first submission is it ... it will end up on an internal list of products ineligible for future consideration. This can't be entirely true. I see featured posts on PH that are nothing more than "Version 2" of some previously featured "products". But the links go to the same place.
quintin 11y ago
The fact that not many readers will “Recommend” this article on Medium but has 146 upvotes on HN speaks of the circle that Ryan has and pros of the anonymity that HN provides.
pbreit 11y ago
So it's not perfect and helps to know someone. Welcome to the real world!
zenlikethat 11y ago
The solution to this is easy. Don't visit Product Hunt or treat it as having so much value. It won't make or break a product.
tptacek 11y ago
The only time I ever hear about Product Hunt is in the once- in- a- blue- moon posts like this I see about it on HN. Do people take PH seriously?
- minimaxir 11y ago
  It's taken very seriously by the tech-savvy but non-engineering business crowd. Especially with their implementation of AMAs with VCs/founders. (But very few with actual technical discussion)
- mintplant 11y ago
  It reminds me of TechCrunch some years back. A Silicon Valley echo chamber perceived as a gateway to success, with a heavy emphasis on an initial "launch" bump. Maybe helpful for getting investor attention and media coverage within that techie bubble, but not so much for building a sustainable customer base. Product Hunt is the same but with a thicker veneer of openness.
- rtpg 11y ago
  At the end of the day, it's basically a link aggregator, how serious of a tone should we even take with it? Just as a consumer, in my mind PH is just a place with some links to newly launched "stuff". People seem to want to hit the top of PH and HN but at the end of the day both are probably as valuable as a medium-popularity subreddit if you're just looking for advertising. One difference being that HN comments have always seemed more (for lack of a better word) worthwhile.
- jccalhoun 11y ago
  I don't know about seriously but I used to like it a lot more when it was just a list of new apps and sites. Now there is a bunch of big pictures I ignore and a narrow band of 4-5 apps and a bunch of other stuff I don't go to producthunt for.
hoodoof 11y ago
The worst thing about Product Hunt is that I just don't find many of the products very interesting. Oops having read the article - wow - Payola Hunt! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
nodesocket 11y ago
This really feeds into my cynical attitude and sentiment that we are part of a rigged system. I've been trying to stay positive about technology and startups, but honestly it is everywhere. Tech news, advertising, fundraising, hiring. Finance and the stock market is rigged the same way. A select few (the rich) get inside info, reporters and analyst write and give positive/negative spin on companies and profit, traders screw their customers, it is everywhere. Different market, same behavior.
- lowglow 11y ago
  Pay into honest systems then. Why feed something you know is rigged?
varunjuice 11y ago
Product hunt is native advertising.
wuliwong 11y ago
I had a similar experience and I guess I am naive because I did let it bother me. Someone submitted my site to PH a couple months ago, it got up-voted 20+ times in that "upcoming" area but never was moved to the front page. I believe it ended that first day with more up-votes than some of the products that were featured. I reached out to the PH guys on twitter and they told me to get more people to vote for it or something to that effect. I noticed a few of products jumping straight to the front page without the upcoming purgatory. I have read a number of comments writing these issues off to the fact that PH is a "for profit" company. I think that is a bit too jaded an opinion to have no expectations for this to ever be different. My understanding is that Reddit does not suffer these same issues. I think a for-profit venture could actually benefit greatly by being transparent. I think it would take founders that are looking further down the road than the PH guys appear to be and not getting caught up in the immediate gratification of glad-handing and being part of an 'inner elite.' Full disclosure, I still look at PH pretty regularly. :-p
OoTheNigerian 11y ago
Below is a mail I sent in response to a Recode article in June about Product Hunt. Summary : horribly elitist and what the Valley should avoid becoming. I'm almost never harsh to a fellow founder but I thank God Ryan Hoover doesn't weild much influence. Wrong hands to expect equity or fairness. -- Hi Carmel, I'm following up with you about your post on PH. Summary, There is insane bias towards outsiders of the club. Here is my case in point. I submitted my startup https://callbase.co https://callbase.co up to FIVE times and it was never approved. However aircall.io a competitor has made the front page TWICE in that period. Of course having a handle @OoTheNigerian does not help :D As at the time my second submission was being rejected, Mattermark's Newsletter was making the front-page as a product (1 of 5 http://www.producthunt.com/tech/mattermark-4#!/s/posts/mattermark http://www.producthunt.com/tech/mattermark-4#!/s/posts/matte...). Yup, ridiculous. (i have absolutely nothing against the great work Danielle is doing). This is one of several. I sent Ryan (copied) a stongly worded email after several ignored ones and he "offered" to allow mine through on a weekend. Lol. This is just a case in point how hard outsiders (I live in Lagos, Nigeria) find it in the quest for success. Silicon Valley is a meritocracy but you have to be seen first to be considered. No? Of course, it is his platform and can do whatever he wants with it. However, it should be clear to him what he is doing. Perpetuating the cycle of the powerful being more powerful. It would be nice to see the demographic representation of his all powerful voting clique. After reading this Ryan may (or not after seeing this) now go posting about us when we may be asleep or not ready. Great write up BTW!
sixQuarks 11y ago
The "products" that appear in the top placements of Product hunt these days are laughable. They're mostly features, not products.
deleted 11y ago
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onewaystreet 11y ago
Startup founders care way too much about getting featured on HN, PH, TechCrunch etc. If you look at the successful startups of that last few years (http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/ http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/) many of them were successful before they were even noticed by the technorati. Unless your product is specifically targeted to these people, you are wasting your time.
deleted 11y ago
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aagha 11y ago
It's interesting to read all these comments about PH over a year after previous posts (0,1) about PH's transparency. @rrhoover's comments are especially interesting as they indicate that PH is interested in moving to a more open and democratic (and diverse) promotion platform. Over two years later, it seems its still moving in the wrong direction. 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7980403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7980403 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8047647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8047647
kilimchoi 11y ago
One thing this article fails to mention is that YC startups automatically get featured on Product Hunt. This probably has to do with the fact that YC invested in Product Hunt.
- dshanahan 11y ago
  false
aagha 11y ago
A lot of anger here for PH, but why not the people that back it? The Angel investors are listed on their site [0]. Are some of these folks so powerful that if you tweeted at them that they're backing a corrupt bro-club you'd lose any chance of funding? 0 - https://www.producthunt.com/about https://www.producthunt.com/about
nl 11y ago
What someone should do is create a ProductHunt competitor, and geo-block California. Nothing like faux-exclusivity to encourage adoption ;)
forrestthewoods 11y ago
I've been visiting HN daily for 4 years. I've never heard of Product Hunt. Is it actually that big of a deal? I'm sure it's been on the front page here and I've missed it. But apparently not all that often? Or maybe this is a case where now that I know the name I'll see it everywhere. Funny how that works sometimes...
sagivo 11y ago
I got to be #2 in product hunt featured list few weeks ago. a random dude saw my post here at HN about launching a beta and published it there. no inside connections, no promotions, and unfortunately - no preparations. we got ~5000 visits in a day and didn't really used the spike for anything special. we lost most of the momentum the next few days and when we were ready to better UI/Flow it was too late.
intrasight 11y ago
And since not I nor anybody that I know has ever heard of or used Product Hunt - why do I care?
sparkzilla 11y ago
I am so happy to read this article and I commend Ben Wheeler on bringing it to light. I had written a similar article in July but did not publish it as I was promoting a new version of my site. I was afraid to speak out because I believed it would hurt my chances of getting funded. I should have gone with my convictions. I have now published it. [1] Ryan Hoover has not only outsourced VC product discovery, he has outsourced its class system too. It's incredibly disheartening to be outside the loop, trying to get your product noticed, and submitting it to what you think is a free system only to have other products by well-connected insiders block it out. When I saw Hoover and Jason Calacanis congratulating each other on Twitter I knew immediately what was going on. Despite multiple emails, Hoover wouldn't even give me access so I could comment on competing products. I'm glad this is coming back to bite him and his investors too -- they went along with it. I don't expect anything to change because sites are a reflection of the personality of the people who run them and Hoover has already shown he is completely corrupt. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. [1]http://newslines.org/blog/the-new-gatekeeper/ http://newslines.org/blog/the-new-gatekeeper/
- birken 11y ago
  None of these people are bosses or gatekeepers! Even if I gave you a magical power where anytime you wanted your site would simultaneously be posted on Techcrunch, #1 on HN and #1 on Product Hunt, it probably would make no difference in your success or failure. The bosses and gatekeepers are the people that try your product once, and decide if it is better than the 500 things they are already doing in their lives. You can spend your whole life getting caught up in the perceived unfairness of it all, but that isn't going to help your company become any more successful. The tech press (and quite a few startup communities) are sirens that call you in and try to sabotage you in every way possible. Just ignore them, or at least minimize how much they are affecting your mental state.
  - calcsam 11y ago
    The tech press affects primarily two things: (1) Your ability to raise early-stage funding (2) Your ability to hire engineering & product talent Getting these two things won't guarantee success, nor will not getting these things preclude it. But there is a pretty strong correlation when you try to scale.
nedwin 11y ago
Hoover et al can build their product however they want, just be honest and consistent. Looking through old threads I found this cracker of a post in reply to Ryan about their "anti voter ring policy" - which his tweet seems to counteract. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9932641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9932641
- dang 11y ago
  Ryan has asked me about voting ring detection more than once, so I know that he cares about this stuff. It's also the sort of problem that changes a great deal as a community grows, so older statements may no longer apply.
cromwellian 11y ago
I think Product Hunt merely reflects the way things work in SV. SV is not a "meritocracy". Really shitty ideas get funded and acqui-hired all the time based on insider connections. You think Marissa bought Polyvore for $230 million because it was a rocket ship?
- jl87 11y ago
  yes - Polyvore had massive fanbase north of 25m monthly users
  - cromwellian 11y ago
    And how much revenue were those users generating? Of what strategic importance was it to Yahoo? How are they getting a return on $230 million?
    - theinternetman 11y ago
      Probably way more than something like Mailbox bought by Dropbox, but no one here would say that's a bad idea because most HN users understand mail clients but not a fashion social network
marshray 11y ago
I had never heard of Product Hunt. If I had heard of it, in the absence of information to the contrary, I would have assumed it was corrupt. It appears in this instance my general cynicism of all-things-Marketed is confirmed. But what would an alternative world look like? Is the industry trapped in some product placement local minimum? What if we could trust online reviews by default? Would the same industry make more money or less, or would it just go to different people? Often, defenders of invasive advertising say "it informs people of products which are relevant to their interests". Shouldn't then advertisers promote integrity in their other Marketing venues as well?
anon8418 11y ago
I feel the point of PH is not to create a real business in the sense of earning money by selling you a product or service, but rather to establish personal brand equity and influencing power of the management team. This can be useful for future projects (such as finding funding), to increase their standing in the SV community, and to establish themselves as marquee valley power brokers. In this sense, it doesn't make much sense to add more transparency and voting control to ordinary users. This is pure speculation and assumes the worst. So take this with a grain of salt.
- dang 11y ago
  This crosses the line into personal attack, which breaks the HN guidelines. You couldn't possibly know such things. Fair critique is fair game. The OP, for example, made an effort to be fair. But comments like this one, that assume the worst about someone and try to paint them in an ugly light, say more about the commenter. We've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10740521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10740521 and marked it off-topic.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    Nothing the parent says comes off as a personal attack. It seems like a perfectly valid opinion to me and I've seen worse written here on HN.
    - dang 11y ago
      "I've edited my post so that it appears less of a personal attack."
      - Robin_Message 11y ago
        Could we have a little feature to indicate edited posts please? Invisible edits make for very confusing cause and effect, such as in this case.
        11y ago
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
So in other words, the same way everything in the "startup" world works: It's who you know.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dilap 11y ago
Yeah, Product Hunt is a curated platform. I think it's always been pretty transparent about this?
chanux 11y ago
Does anybody know how to delete a product hunt account? PS: Apparently you have to email hello@producthunt.com
altonzheng 11y ago
How effective is posting something to product hunt really though? I mean, you are basically sharing it to the same silicon valley tech community who live a life very divorced from the majority of people.
joshmn 11y ago
I've had three products I wanted to push on PH and since I'm not in anyone's inner-circle / e-friend I was promptly told I had to find someone who was in order to gain access. It's like a boy's club where they pass around the neighborhood bike for everyone to ride, only to find another one after they're all done riding it. Even more so, I've seen more "here's a landing page, we haven't even a git repo yet, just trying to validate the idea, so give us your email" shit on PH than I would on Reddit.
Angostura 11y ago
The parallels with the whole Digg v4 debacle seem quite pronounced.
artur_makly 11y ago
How Meta is this?
brw12 11y ago
Follow-up: Open letter by the fictional "Liam Cooper", or how @ProductHunt might respond to recent criticism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10745098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10745098
stahlkopf 11y ago
I've always imagined sites like these are run by a small circle of insiders, who essentially sponsor or promote specific products. I find it hard to believe the promotional buzz and hierarchy of an entry into a site like this completely natural.
odbol 11y ago
Not to mention that Product Hunt violates their own rules all the time: I see plenty of posts for big companies like Microsoft announcing products that aren’t available yet (e.g. Hololens, Windows 10 before it came out, etc), even though their FAQ explicitly states that the product has to be available to the public at the time of posting. Really what should tip people off even more is the inability to comment. If the viewers of the site can’t actually interact, since commenting is only allowed for “approved" users, they should realize that the whole thing is just a scam. See any ads on Product Hunt? See any monetization strategies? Oh wait, the whole website is an ad, and only those in the know or those who pay will get featured.
oelmekki 11y ago
Hate everywhere, for a change... I don't get why people think PH owes them in any way. Yes, it's all about curation. But yes, anyone could post there, provided they have a good product and they socialize a bit. And this is what this is about. To me, PH is a social network for founders. They show off their project, discuss it and get feedback. To all the people blaming how it's not egalitarian: would you create a twitter account, avoid engaging with anyone, then complain nobody is following you? The same applies than in any social network: if you want people to get interested in what you're doing, start with being interested in what they're doing, and chat, a lot.
manigandham 11y ago
And now there's https://www.openhunt.co/ https://www.openhunt.co/

695 points by brw12 11y ago

brw12 11y ago

Interested in your thoughts, HN. I tried to write from a place of compassion and not be all haterating.

bronson 11y ago
Matter-of-fact writing and great images. Very well done. And I think you've just made Product Hunt insiders a lot more popular...
fweespeech 11y ago
Fair enough but https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*reUE0OYzV119seobZYQ45Q.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*reUE0OYzV119seobZY... really feels like the only real takeaway I have from that post.
jdp23 11y ago
I thought you struck a good tone while pointing out the insider advantage and how everybody seems to take its existence for granted in their descriptions of how to succeed. It certainly didn't come across to me as haterating.

exolymph 11y ago

Apparently I'm not cynical enough, because I was surprised by this. Does Reddit's front page work the same way?

minimaxir 11y ago
No. Reddit's front page ranking has no hidden metagaming from the mods. (The most they can do is hide it)
- siegecraft 11y ago
  Which is probably why certain topics get swiftly disappeared from the front page. Although I'm sure there is/was work underway on tools to automate this.
  - minimaxir 11y ago
    Most large subreddits run AutoModerator to pre-filter submissions. In terms of submissions getting to the front page and disappearing, that's a different issue entirely than insider privilege (namely, highly selective rule enforcement). The subreddit /r/undelete captures these incidents.
  - finnn 11y ago
    AutoModerator, by far the most popular reddit moderation automation solution, was integrated with reddit about 8 months ago[0], making it "official". It has lots of options, i haven't played with it that heavily [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/30z70k/reddit_change_automoderator_is_now_integrated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/30z70k/reddit_ch...
- myth_buster 11y ago
  I believe you can check the ones that were dropped in the "Undelete" sub. https://www.reddit.com/r/undelete https://www.reddit.com/r/undelete

minimaxir 11y ago

Speaking of "PH is rigged by insiders," it's worth noting that a "top user" is selling a book on how to best pander to the PH userbase: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TP3MFHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1450208665&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX220_SY330_QL65&keywords=product+hunt+book&dpPl=1&dpID=416S3qelIKL&ref=plSrch http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TP3MFHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=... This is an odd racket, to say the least. Re/code wrote a relevant article a few months back (http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup-kingmaker-faces-charges-of-elitism/ http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup-kingma...) about Product Hunt elitism, which I was interviewed for and the response from the PH team to the article was essentially "haters gonna hate." It's disappointing that nothing has changed since then, and arguably, things have gotten worse.

exolymph 11y ago
Wow. I'd be fascinated to know how well this book sells.
- jldugger 11y ago
  Seems like a 8 dollar add for their promotional services, really.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
shostack 11y ago
What is a shame about it is that they had a rare opportunity in that they actually had traction and buzz around PH. If they had taken a different attitude and truly tried to make it THE launch platform, they could have done amazing things. They could have democratized a big chunk of it, and still had promoted positions that could generate revenue for them.
- zabramow 11y ago
  PH can feel a lot like a popularity contest and a SV insider's club, not like a democratization of launch.

ryanSrich 11y ago

It always surprises me when people get bent out of shape when they learn that blogs and forums are rigged to favor a certain group of people. There's A LOT of money to be had and if you think places like Product Hunt, Reddit, HN, etc. aren't all being rigged in some way, you're naive.

exolymph 11y ago
I guess the way the world works is that there's a certain amount of meritocracy in any given system, but it only accounts for like 20% of success.
beachstartup 11y ago
in other words, somebody's agenda is always being turned into 'reality'.
minimaxir 11y ago
There are ways to optimize submissions to Reddit/Hacker News for upvotes, yes. (and I've done a lot of research on both services.) However, I would say that neither is rigged; that is, moderators don't control what is seen on the front page. (Although in the case of HN, moderators have bumped up good posts which have not been upvoted, which is a positive intervention) Product Hunt, as noticed in the article, requires shennanigans to be successful. The real problem here is that PH presents itself as a meritocracy when it really isn't, and it has mislead naive entrepreneurs into thinking a given product is "good" when it truly isn't.
- quintin 11y ago
  Correction: HN mods often flag posts down. Almost on a very regular basis. They do this for the larger good.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    As far as I know that's not mods, that's regular users. minimaxir is talking about the small repost-bump that some posts get.

lsniddy 11y ago

One of my products was featured on product hunt in it's early days (no idea who submitted it). I remember thinking then - "well, cool, but people looking for new products are not really my target market." Has anyone seen any value come from PH?

mladenkovacevic 11y ago
I imagine it's mostly for companies looking to attract investors, not customers.
- petercooper 11y ago
  Maybe it has replaced TechCrunch in this role.
LCDninja 11y ago
Same experience as you, someone I don't know posted my app to product hunt. I have no idea what would motivate them to do this (I'm not a product hunt user.) The reason I noticed was because I was searching for the reason that app sales spiked. Real value? Sales increased a few thousand percent for one day.
tomasien 11y ago
The only thing that bothers me about PH is one of my products was one of the most upvoted products of all time there in the early days, but I didn't submit it. It would likely get that status again (it's quite popular among the PH type crowd) if posted now when they have 100x the audience, but it can't be posted again. I find that unfortunate, HN lets you repost links after some period of time I believe for 2.0 releases, etc.
- volaski 11y ago
  I am pretty sure you can resubmit to PH when you have a new version, especially if you had a great run with your first version.
frankdenbow 11y ago

jbob2000 11y ago

This is how I think Shark Tank and Dragon's Den work too. The "sharks" all parade their new products on TV under the guise of entertainment, and throw in a couple silly/heartwarming ideas and people.

burkaman 11y ago
You can find a lot of testimonials from people who have appeared on Shark Tank, and all the ones I've seen say "I was surprised by how real the show is". The only major change is that there's an hour-long pitch/discussion that gets edited down to 5 or 10 minutes of interesting TV. Nothing is scripted, the sharks don't know what's coming, the negotiation is real, etc. I guess it's possible that these people were paid to lie about the show, but it seems like Shark Tank is one of the most realistic reality shows.
- jbob2000 11y ago
  The ideas aren't mutually exclusive; There can be real people and planted advertisements...
vogt 11y ago
Incorrect, at least with Shark Tank. Can't speak to Dragon's Den. I worked for one of the Sharks on their ST accounts. Nothing is staged, it's all regular people who submit their ideas and are selected based on who the network thinks will make for good entertainment (personality, "wow factor" with the product, etc). During filming, the sharks are given an overview of who the person presenting is and what their product is/does. Everything else is organic. The Sharks have no advance knowledge of the products and the deals get made or shut down after due diligence is done after filming. That's not to say that the sharks don't do a huge dog and pony show of promotion around their products, though.
- ryanSrich 11y ago
  What type of due diligence must a shark or their team do during the show? I imagine these funding offers are just term sheets pending a legit financial review?

michaelbuckbee 11y ago

PH is more like a collaboratively edited magazine where the founders have selected a large group of friends to act as a top level filtration system for "products". Mostly what they're selecting for is "is this of interest to our audience" - of which said audience is currently mostly free tech / designery / social type things (even as they start to add more categories). While it's nice to be featured, it's quite unlikely to bring you a large amount of traffic and/or signups. A submission to a decent sized sub-reddit will likely drive 2x the traffic that ProductHunt will, a submission to BetaList more signups and a front page HN post 10x. If there's a reason to get featured it's to try and get some feedback from the community (if they're your audience) as they tend to be quite helpful.

pc86 11y ago
While HN certainly drives a decent amount of traffic (usually), I doubt that it will drive 10x the number of sign-ups as a PH submission, particularly if it's more to the design/social bent.
brw12 11y ago
very helpful, thanks.

api 11y ago

PH strikes me as a vanity metric. Does it really get you noticed that much?

minimaxir 11y ago
PH is a tautology: in order to get noticed on PH, you need to be noticed by an insider beforehand, which therefore makes the benefit minimal. The benefit of Reddit/HN is that there's a much higher probability of content that would otherwise not be noticed become viral.
brw12 11y ago
the community discussions and support might be a bigger deal than the signups. like HN.

volaski 11y ago

In my experience, the OP is correct about one thing, it's waste of time to post on upcoming on PH. However this is nothing compared to how opaque Hacker News is. If your product is novel enough and reach out to these "insiders" beforehand (or even afterhand), I don't think you have trouble getting to the front page on PH, whereas on HN I see tons of people reaching front page by asking for upvotes from friends. The only difference is PH is--ironically--transparent about its opaqueness, whereas HN is opaque about its transparentness. To elaborate, on hacker news everything looks transparent, and to certain degree it is (you can find the raw stream under "new" tab), but the ones that reach the front page are not always there because 100% of the community decided so, there are many hidden things going on in the background that most people don't even know. Whereas all you need to do to get featured on PH is to reach out to these "insiders", to guarantee you reach front page on HN you need to get people to upvote you. I feel that PH is much more democratic than HN since everyone gets same chance whereas on HN the people with already existing audience wins.

minimaxir 11y ago
Asking for upvotes does not work on HN, and using shennanigans like mass voting from /newest doesn't work either. (the points register but they will not be used for ranking) Product Hunt, in fairness, has the same do-not-ask-for-upvotes clause in their FAQ, but given the amount of people blatantly asking for upvotes on Twitter (https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&s=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&s=typd) I am doubtful that policy is actually enforced. It's free publicity, after all.
- brw12 11y ago
  PH's algorithm tries to discount upvotes that seem to be stuffed... eg by counting votes that come from front page more highly. community managers sometimes scold people on twitter for begging upvotes.
- volaski 11y ago
  Yes theoretically it shouldn't work, but I see it work everyday, you just need to email your friends and tell them not to visit the direct link but go to the front page and find your post and upvote. But anyway my point was exactly this, most people aren't even aware of this "black magic" going on in the background, which is worse than the process being opaque. Because at least on product hunt people know how to hack their way into being featured whereas on hacker news most people don't even realize it's possible. Also my point was not just about asking for upvotes. I was trying to point out how on hackernews if you already have an audience--say your email newsletter subscribers or blog readers--it is likely that your post will go up to the front page. Therefore newbies regardless of how great content they have don't get to play on level field as already famous people. What I found great about PH was you are judged by what you build, not your existing reputation. I'm not saying HN is more corrupt or anything than PH. PH is better at this since HN is more general purpose whereas PH is just about products.

chinathrow 11y ago

TL;DR: it's mostly rigged by some users with privileges.

birken 11y ago

Hacker News is a long-running, open, inclusive startup community that is subsidized by a related business, doesn't sell anything, and has proven time and again to do things good for the entire startup community. Product Hunt is a new, closed, exclusive startup community run by a for-profit company that will eventually have to start selling you something. Not sure why people complain about PH so much... just don't use it. There already is a perfectly good community of startup people out there that has much more incentive to stay "pure" than a for-profit one. Sure, HN isn't perfect, but fundamentally it is always going to be better than any for-profit communities. (And also this obligatory comment: If you want to build a successful company, stop wasting your time browsing startup communities and spend your time talking with users and building your product)

jl87 11y ago
HN is equally rigged. The mods regularly change headlines, remove posts, and allow YC companies to post on the front page.
- minimaxir 11y ago
  1. Headlines are changed to match the article verbatim, or if the article is linkbait, the title is changed to nonlinkbait (the latter might be more frequent case from your submission history) 2. Again, users flag. Rarely moderators remove posts other than that. 3. Those are job ads, which have a set decay time and always start at #6.
  - gearoidoc 11y ago
    I think you're off on 2 and 3 - although I only have anecdata to make me believe so. On point 2: I've often found posts which are gaining traction on the homepage which do not subscribe to the 'scale fast'-centric belief system of YC are pulled. Most recently this one by DHH: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider 3. They're not all job ads. Stripe updates their API and it goes straight to #1? Come on...

throwaway415 11y ago

I was initially really excited to learn about Product Hunt and what it meant to the existing ecosystem: Diversity. An independent contender in the war for eyeballs/voice in the hacking/tech/entrepreneurship community -- how exciting! I would imagine while their motivations might be similar to what YC wants with HN (distribution, influence), they could possibly open up and serve new members in the ecosystem that aren't, can't, or don't want to be a part of the HN/YC pipeline. Building a working group of heterogenous independent sources to serve new and exciting topics is important to breaking out of the echo chamber we so often create for ourselves within tech. I was hoping Product Hunt could bootstrap the entire venture, stay clean, and true to the spirit of a meritocracy. Then they went through YC, and now I see the same "influencers" there as I do here, with the same system in place to promote their own vested interests. It just makes me slightly sad that the pressures of succeeding create collusion among players in this market, thereby perhaps obscuring the potential for new/interesting/different emergent technologies/startups to thrive. Among my peers, over time PH has become less of a community set out to serve the good of the people, and instead has become more of a pipeline for quick sales or testing new ideas, leaving a feeling of what can only be described previously as the "Tech Crunch of Initiation". Product Hunt has essentially supplanted Tech Crunch in the YC/TC relationship of yesteryear, albeit to an even more perilous extent. Products are no longer vetted by working professional journalists, whose obligation should be to the consumer and not the producer, but rather by the very product's investors, advisors, and "insiders". We therefore must ask what is the value-add here? Is it truly a wonder that it proves marginal, and perhaps even detrimental, to the long term success of the startup community as a whole?

tomasien 11y ago

Startup advisors regularly take stakes in the full %'s? Since when? We have tons of advisors none of them have ever asked for a stake.

shimon 11y ago
This was an odd assertion in the article. Advisors (excluding those who are also investors) often get some shares, but several percent is ludicrously high for just advice. The expected number is probably closer to 0.1%.
- tomasien 11y ago
  I can imagine a point for a highly active advisors pre-launch who has certain deliverables, but only then and definitely not more than a point.
dshanahan 11y ago
This assertion in the article is where it became clear to me the author just didn't do any research into the marketing channel they were hoping to gain value out of. Most 'straight to the frontpage' hunts come from a product geek submitting a product they found on their own, or via email/tweet etc from the makers. And yeah, pre-launch advisors don't take any equity.

mootothemax 11y ago

Surely if your app's sole source of success is a spending a short amount of time on some website's front page, you have bigger issues with your business strategy? Go back a few years and everyone used to talk about their struggles getting featured on TechCrunch; I didn't believe it was make-or-break back then either.

desireco42 11y ago
He is just pointing that game is rigged and a lot of articles promote how egalitarian everything is, how it is meritocracy. As someone also pointed out, there is somewhat similar thing here as well, just, I feel it is more clear what is happening. Yes, it is like TechCrunch :).
myth_buster 11y ago
The way I look at is as an opportunity cost for both producers and consumers. In place of a valuable app/product, what the consumers would get is a lemon.
someear 11y ago
A big challenge super early companies/products have is getting eyeballs on the product. PH can get you thousands of users with little to no effort. So it's not about your product living or dying from PH, but it can take startups months to get that kind of feedback from users using the product. It won't determine success, but can certainly put you on that path. We ended up being featured on PH's front page after one of these "insiders" found us on twitter, and posted us. Had no affiliation to us. Got hundreds of upvotes, and thousands of users to try our product out. Over time we lost all our PH users, but the feedback from them was awesome, and is likely what has kept us around 6 months later. So not the sole reason, but definitely a significant one.

phantom_oracle 11y ago

Nothing can hurt a well-meaning first-time founder of some useful side-project business then to learn that a non-entity like Product Hunt is a rigged game where the inner circle are simply gaming the system for their friends and people whom they benefit from and will benefit. From "top 3% of coders" to "your product will get 1st spot if you scratch our back with a small slice of the pie or counter-promote our product with yours" to "we will only invest in you if you get referred through an acquittance of ours", the game surely does feel more rigged each day. The upper echelons of tech sure does share more similarities with high-finance then they would like to admit...

Bjartr 11y ago
Does it feel more rigged because it is becoming more rigged or because the level of rigging that already exists in the ecosystem is becoming more visible?
- l33tbro 11y ago
  It's pure deception. PH presents as egalitarian and meritocratic, but that's clearly horseshit. We need the right person to build a more transparent and credible alternative. They've straight-up lost me as a daily visitor.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - AznHisoka 11y ago
    If I was a betting man, I'd bet their daily visitors have shrunk a fair bit the past few months. Who is the type of people who would even visit daily to discover random products that share no theme? Most of them probably are just checking for competitors or journalists looking for a story. Not real actual users. This their downfall.
    - matznerd 11y ago
      I don't think this is true at all, and I would bet the opposite. They are bringing in live chats/podcasts/etc and going outside of their normal demographics. If anything it is similar how reddit used AMAs (by Obama, etc) to expand the reach of the platform to a wider audience.

hoodoof 11y ago

I feel like its a mistake to hide content behind "see all" and arrow right buttons. I feel like people look at what is shown to them and they are willing to scroll down but far fewer people are likely to go to the trouble of pressing a right arrow or "see all" button.

sharkweek 11y ago

I don't visit Product Hunt much, but I do follow their founder on Twitter. He seems like a super well-intentioned person, so I'm surprised to read all of the commentary here on HN. Am I being duped by some Product Hunt scam that I'm completely oblivious to?

olefoo 11y ago
No one starts out intending to build a corrupt ecosystem. But when money and it's proxies ( attention, publicity, buzz, etc. ) are flowing around the incentives shift. The people Product Hunt tapped with editorial control were given that power because PH thought they would best serve the needs of their audience that way. And like most such networks it starts off as a relatively egalitarian deal, but rapidly accrues winners and barriers to later entrants. The lesson here is that if the existing networks are closed to you, then you should go ahead and build your own. And then someday you too can be accused of being an evil mastermind ;-)

callmeed 11y ago

> That first submission is it ... it will end up on an internal list of products ineligible for future consideration. This can't be entirely true. I see featured posts on PH that are nothing more than "Version 2" of some previously featured "products". But the links go to the same place.

quintin 11y ago

The fact that not many readers will “Recommend” this article on Medium but has 146 upvotes on HN speaks of the circle that Ryan has and pros of the anonymity that HN provides.

pbreit 11y ago

So it's not perfect and helps to know someone. Welcome to the real world!

zenlikethat 11y ago

The solution to this is easy. Don't visit Product Hunt or treat it as having so much value. It won't make or break a product.

tptacek 11y ago

The only time I ever hear about Product Hunt is in the once- in- a- blue- moon posts like this I see about it on HN. Do people take PH seriously?

minimaxir 11y ago
It's taken very seriously by the tech-savvy but non-engineering business crowd. Especially with their implementation of AMAs with VCs/founders. (But very few with actual technical discussion)
mintplant 11y ago
It reminds me of TechCrunch some years back. A Silicon Valley echo chamber perceived as a gateway to success, with a heavy emphasis on an initial "launch" bump. Maybe helpful for getting investor attention and media coverage within that techie bubble, but not so much for building a sustainable customer base. Product Hunt is the same but with a thicker veneer of openness.
rtpg 11y ago
At the end of the day, it's basically a link aggregator, how serious of a tone should we even take with it? Just as a consumer, in my mind PH is just a place with some links to newly launched "stuff". People seem to want to hit the top of PH and HN but at the end of the day both are probably as valuable as a medium-popularity subreddit if you're just looking for advertising. One difference being that HN comments have always seemed more (for lack of a better word) worthwhile.
jccalhoun 11y ago
I don't know about seriously but I used to like it a lot more when it was just a list of new apps and sites. Now there is a bunch of big pictures I ignore and a narrow band of 4-5 apps and a bunch of other stuff I don't go to producthunt for.

hoodoof 11y ago

The worst thing about Product Hunt is that I just don't find many of the products very interesting. Oops having read the article - wow - Payola Hunt! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

nodesocket 11y ago

This really feeds into my cynical attitude and sentiment that we are part of a rigged system. I've been trying to stay positive about technology and startups, but honestly it is everywhere. Tech news, advertising, fundraising, hiring. Finance and the stock market is rigged the same way. A select few (the rich) get inside info, reporters and analyst write and give positive/negative spin on companies and profit, traders screw their customers, it is everywhere. Different market, same behavior.

lowglow 11y ago
Pay into honest systems then. Why feed something you know is rigged?

varunjuice 11y ago

Product hunt is native advertising.

wuliwong 11y ago

I had a similar experience and I guess I am naive because I did let it bother me. Someone submitted my site to PH a couple months ago, it got up-voted 20+ times in that "upcoming" area but never was moved to the front page. I believe it ended that first day with more up-votes than some of the products that were featured. I reached out to the PH guys on twitter and they told me to get more people to vote for it or something to that effect. I noticed a few of products jumping straight to the front page without the upcoming purgatory. I have read a number of comments writing these issues off to the fact that PH is a "for profit" company. I think that is a bit too jaded an opinion to have no expectations for this to ever be different. My understanding is that Reddit does not suffer these same issues. I think a for-profit venture could actually benefit greatly by being transparent. I think it would take founders that are looking further down the road than the PH guys appear to be and not getting caught up in the immediate gratification of glad-handing and being part of an 'inner elite.' Full disclosure, I still look at PH pretty regularly. :-p

OoTheNigerian 11y ago

Below is a mail I sent in response to a Recode article in June about Product Hunt. Summary : horribly elitist and what the Valley should avoid becoming. I'm almost never harsh to a fellow founder but I thank God Ryan Hoover doesn't weild much influence. Wrong hands to expect equity or fairness. -- Hi Carmel, I'm following up with you about your post on PH. Summary, There is insane bias towards outsiders of the club. Here is my case in point. I submitted my startup https://callbase.co https://callbase.co up to FIVE times and it was never approved. However aircall.io a competitor has made the front page TWICE in that period. Of course having a handle @OoTheNigerian does not help :D As at the time my second submission was being rejected, Mattermark's Newsletter was making the front-page as a product (1 of 5 http://www.producthunt.com/tech/mattermark-4#!/s/posts/mattermark http://www.producthunt.com/tech/mattermark-4#!/s/posts/matte...). Yup, ridiculous. (i have absolutely nothing against the great work Danielle is doing). This is one of several. I sent Ryan (copied) a stongly worded email after several ignored ones and he "offered" to allow mine through on a weekend. Lol. This is just a case in point how hard outsiders (I live in Lagos, Nigeria) find it in the quest for success. Silicon Valley is a meritocracy but you have to be seen first to be considered. No? Of course, it is his platform and can do whatever he wants with it. However, it should be clear to him what he is doing. Perpetuating the cycle of the powerful being more powerful. It would be nice to see the demographic representation of his all powerful voting clique. After reading this Ryan may (or not after seeing this) now go posting about us when we may be asleep or not ready. Great write up BTW!

sixQuarks 11y ago

The "products" that appear in the top placements of Product hunt these days are laughable. They're mostly features, not products.

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onewaystreet 11y ago

Startup founders care way too much about getting featured on HN, PH, TechCrunch etc. If you look at the successful startups of that last few years (http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/ http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/) many of them were successful before they were even noticed by the technorati. Unless your product is specifically targeted to these people, you are wasting your time.

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aagha 11y ago

It's interesting to read all these comments about PH over a year after previous posts (0,1) about PH's transparency. @rrhoover's comments are especially interesting as they indicate that PH is interested in moving to a more open and democratic (and diverse) promotion platform. Over two years later, it seems its still moving in the wrong direction. 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7980403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7980403 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8047647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8047647

kilimchoi 11y ago

One thing this article fails to mention is that YC startups automatically get featured on Product Hunt. This probably has to do with the fact that YC invested in Product Hunt.

dshanahan 11y ago
false

aagha 11y ago

A lot of anger here for PH, but why not the people that back it? The Angel investors are listed on their site [0]. Are some of these folks so powerful that if you tweeted at them that they're backing a corrupt bro-club you'd lose any chance of funding? 0 - https://www.producthunt.com/about https://www.producthunt.com/about

nl 11y ago

What someone should do is create a ProductHunt competitor, and geo-block California. Nothing like faux-exclusivity to encourage adoption ;)

forrestthewoods 11y ago

I've been visiting HN daily for 4 years. I've never heard of Product Hunt. Is it actually that big of a deal? I'm sure it's been on the front page here and I've missed it. But apparently not all that often? Or maybe this is a case where now that I know the name I'll see it everywhere. Funny how that works sometimes...

sagivo 11y ago

I got to be #2 in product hunt featured list few weeks ago. a random dude saw my post here at HN about launching a beta and published it there. no inside connections, no promotions, and unfortunately - no preparations. we got ~5000 visits in a day and didn't really used the spike for anything special. we lost most of the momentum the next few days and when we were ready to better UI/Flow it was too late.

intrasight 11y ago

And since not I nor anybody that I know has ever heard of or used Product Hunt - why do I care?

sparkzilla 11y ago

I am so happy to read this article and I commend Ben Wheeler on bringing it to light. I had written a similar article in July but did not publish it as I was promoting a new version of my site. I was afraid to speak out because I believed it would hurt my chances of getting funded. I should have gone with my convictions. I have now published it. [1] Ryan Hoover has not only outsourced VC product discovery, he has outsourced its class system too. It's incredibly disheartening to be outside the loop, trying to get your product noticed, and submitting it to what you think is a free system only to have other products by well-connected insiders block it out. When I saw Hoover and Jason Calacanis congratulating each other on Twitter I knew immediately what was going on. Despite multiple emails, Hoover wouldn't even give me access so I could comment on competing products. I'm glad this is coming back to bite him and his investors too -- they went along with it. I don't expect anything to change because sites are a reflection of the personality of the people who run them and Hoover has already shown he is completely corrupt. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. [1]http://newslines.org/blog/the-new-gatekeeper/ http://newslines.org/blog/the-new-gatekeeper/

birken 11y ago
None of these people are bosses or gatekeepers! Even if I gave you a magical power where anytime you wanted your site would simultaneously be posted on Techcrunch, #1 on HN and #1 on Product Hunt, it probably would make no difference in your success or failure. The bosses and gatekeepers are the people that try your product once, and decide if it is better than the 500 things they are already doing in their lives. You can spend your whole life getting caught up in the perceived unfairness of it all, but that isn't going to help your company become any more successful. The tech press (and quite a few startup communities) are sirens that call you in and try to sabotage you in every way possible. Just ignore them, or at least minimize how much they are affecting your mental state.
- calcsam 11y ago
  The tech press affects primarily two things: (1) Your ability to raise early-stage funding (2) Your ability to hire engineering & product talent Getting these two things won't guarantee success, nor will not getting these things preclude it. But there is a pretty strong correlation when you try to scale.

nedwin 11y ago

Hoover et al can build their product however they want, just be honest and consistent. Looking through old threads I found this cracker of a post in reply to Ryan about their "anti voter ring policy" - which his tweet seems to counteract. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9932641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9932641

dang 11y ago
Ryan has asked me about voting ring detection more than once, so I know that he cares about this stuff. It's also the sort of problem that changes a great deal as a community grows, so older statements may no longer apply.

cromwellian 11y ago

I think Product Hunt merely reflects the way things work in SV. SV is not a "meritocracy". Really shitty ideas get funded and acqui-hired all the time based on insider connections. You think Marissa bought Polyvore for $230 million because it was a rocket ship?

jl87 11y ago
yes - Polyvore had massive fanbase north of 25m monthly users
- cromwellian 11y ago
  And how much revenue were those users generating? Of what strategic importance was it to Yahoo? How are they getting a return on $230 million?
  - theinternetman 11y ago
    Probably way more than something like Mailbox bought by Dropbox, but no one here would say that's a bad idea because most HN users understand mail clients but not a fashion social network

marshray 11y ago

I had never heard of Product Hunt. If I had heard of it, in the absence of information to the contrary, I would have assumed it was corrupt. It appears in this instance my general cynicism of all-things-Marketed is confirmed. But what would an alternative world look like? Is the industry trapped in some product placement local minimum? What if we could trust online reviews by default? Would the same industry make more money or less, or would it just go to different people? Often, defenders of invasive advertising say "it informs people of products which are relevant to their interests". Shouldn't then advertisers promote integrity in their other Marketing venues as well?

anon8418 11y ago

I feel the point of PH is not to create a real business in the sense of earning money by selling you a product or service, but rather to establish personal brand equity and influencing power of the management team. This can be useful for future projects (such as finding funding), to increase their standing in the SV community, and to establish themselves as marquee valley power brokers. In this sense, it doesn't make much sense to add more transparency and voting control to ordinary users. This is pure speculation and assumes the worst. So take this with a grain of salt.

dang 11y ago
This crosses the line into personal attack, which breaks the HN guidelines. You couldn't possibly know such things. Fair critique is fair game. The OP, for example, made an effort to be fair. But comments like this one, that assume the worst about someone and try to paint them in an ugly light, say more about the commenter. We've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10740521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10740521 and marked it off-topic.
- manigandham 11y ago
  Nothing the parent says comes off as a personal attack. It seems like a perfectly valid opinion to me and I've seen worse written here on HN.
  - dang 11y ago
    "I've edited my post so that it appears less of a personal attack."
    - Robin_Message 11y ago
      Could we have a little feature to indicate edited posts please? Invisible edits make for very confusing cause and effect, such as in this case.
      - 11y ago

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

So in other words, the same way everything in the "startup" world works: It's who you know.

deleted 11y ago

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dilap 11y ago

Yeah, Product Hunt is a curated platform. I think it's always been pretty transparent about this?

chanux 11y ago

Does anybody know how to delete a product hunt account? PS: Apparently you have to email hello@producthunt.com

altonzheng 11y ago

How effective is posting something to product hunt really though? I mean, you are basically sharing it to the same silicon valley tech community who live a life very divorced from the majority of people.

joshmn 11y ago

I've had three products I wanted to push on PH and since I'm not in anyone's inner-circle / e-friend I was promptly told I had to find someone who was in order to gain access. It's like a boy's club where they pass around the neighborhood bike for everyone to ride, only to find another one after they're all done riding it. Even more so, I've seen more "here's a landing page, we haven't even a git repo yet, just trying to validate the idea, so give us your email" shit on PH than I would on Reddit.

Angostura 11y ago

The parallels with the whole Digg v4 debacle seem quite pronounced.

artur_makly 11y ago

How Meta is this?

brw12 11y ago

Follow-up: Open letter by the fictional "Liam Cooper", or how @ProductHunt might respond to recent criticism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10745098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10745098

stahlkopf 11y ago

I've always imagined sites like these are run by a small circle of insiders, who essentially sponsor or promote specific products. I find it hard to believe the promotional buzz and hierarchy of an entry into a site like this completely natural.

odbol 11y ago

Not to mention that Product Hunt violates their own rules all the time: I see plenty of posts for big companies like Microsoft announcing products that aren’t available yet (e.g. Hololens, Windows 10 before it came out, etc), even though their FAQ explicitly states that the product has to be available to the public at the time of posting. Really what should tip people off even more is the inability to comment. If the viewers of the site can’t actually interact, since commenting is only allowed for “approved" users, they should realize that the whole thing is just a scam. See any ads on Product Hunt? See any monetization strategies? Oh wait, the whole website is an ad, and only those in the know or those who pay will get featured.

oelmekki 11y ago

Hate everywhere, for a change... I don't get why people think PH owes them in any way. Yes, it's all about curation. But yes, anyone could post there, provided they have a good product and they socialize a bit. And this is what this is about. To me, PH is a social network for founders. They show off their project, discuss it and get feedback. To all the people blaming how it's not egalitarian: would you create a twitter account, avoid engaging with anyone, then complain nobody is following you? The same applies than in any social network: if you want people to get interested in what you're doing, start with being interested in what they're doing, and chat, a lot.

manigandham 11y ago

And now there's https://www.openhunt.co/ https://www.openhunt.co/