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ProductHunt is the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investments

52 points by dmor 12y ago

7Figures2Commas 12y ago
> ProductHunt Is Quickly Becoming the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investment Opportunities > ...Product Hunt is an excellent sourcing tools for VCs looking to discover little known early stage startups. If ProductHunt is "quickly becoming the hot new destination for sourcing startup investment opportunities" it cannot also be "an excellent sourcing tools [sic] for VCs looking to discover little known early stage startups." Lack of awareness of startups listed on ProductHunt is inversely correlated with ProductHunt's popularity.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  I don't follow. Just because the featured startups are little-known doesn't necessarily correlate with ProductHunt's popularity. Perhaps PH has some secret sauce for finding startups no one knows about but are high quality, which would be great investment opportunities.
  - 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
    I think you misunderstood me. Put simply, ProductHunt's popularity means that once a startup hits ProductHunt, it's no longer "little known." There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the OP's suggestion that ProductHunt is a great sourcing tool for VCs looking for "little known" startups is flawed. If you're a VC compelled to find promising startups before every investor in the Valley knows about them, you now need to find startups before they are ProductHunted.
sparkzilla 12y ago
Did they open it up from Beta yet?
kirillzubovsky 12y ago
Let's be honest though, saying "potentially sourced" is really saying nothing at all. </grumpy grandpa>
- rrhoover 12y ago
  FYI, The 3 startups I tweeted about are confirmed. I've spoken directly with the investors.
  - kirillzubovsky 12y ago
    Oh, I believe you on those three :) I suspect there's been a handful of others, if not many more, where investors decided to call up the startup after it was product-hunted. I am just not a big fan of link-baiting. If I am to spend time on an article, I want evidence, not speculation. Just me, maybe.
return0 12y ago
Sounds like an echo chamber
staunch 12y ago
I've checked the site a few times. The sidebar popup comments thing drives me nuts and I leave. People make fun for HN for being so simple but too clever is far worse.
- james33 12y ago
  How is it being too clever? That is one of my favorite things about the site. If you want to quickly check the comments, you can without leaving the page. If you want to open a few to check later, you can just Cmd/Ctrl+Click the comments link and it'll be on its own page.
  - staunch 12y ago
    It's clever because it's a fancy and inferior alternative to browser tabs. Comments always show up in a partial width sidebar: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprites http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprites
willu 12y ago
I am a fan of ProductHunt and look forward to their emails. BUT I do have to gripe a bit about the current very limited, "exclusive" commenting system. I want to get real insights from people who have used the product/service being featured and instead it's usually just the guy who runs ProductHunt plus maybe one other friend or colleague who takes a couple of minutes to poke around providing pretty shallow feedback...and it's very rarely critical. Then an investor in the featured site/product chimes in about how awesome the team is. Not a lot of value there. Both consumers and founders would benefit from more openness.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rrhoover 12y ago
  I hear you, willu! Currently the product isn't ready for completely open comments. It will get unwieldy if there are 100+ comments on each product and we don't have the team to handle potential spam yet. We're in the process of building an recommendation system so people in the community can invite new contributors (a la dribbble). Here's a screenshot: https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/480377375192932352 https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/480377375192932352 Thanks for your patience and sorry again to limit access but we're working to open it up!
  - aclements18 12y ago
    First off Ryan, I think its a great platform. As a very frequent visitor to the site I would have to reiterate that it is frustrating that I can't really participate in the conversation where there is an aspect of the product that I would like to ask the founder more about. Hopefully you guys can create a way that doesn't result in spam, but feels a little more inclusive. IMHO, a good way to do the comments would be to focus on Q&A with the founders (or someone affiliated with the product) address the question. As a visitor I would like to easily be able to see which questions have been answered instead of scrolling around to piece together the conversation. Certainly looking forward to seeing what you have planned for PH.
pbreit 12y ago
What does "sourced" mean exactly? For example, MoveLoot was in YC W14 so hard to think it was sourced through PH.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
  "This list indicates a correlation between an investment announcement and the company being added to ProductHunt BEFORE announcing funding, but it does not describe causation." In other words, it means nothing. It's pure speculation shrouded in what purports to be some sort of statistical analysis. Which isn't surprising given some of the previous "analyses" from the OP's company.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473904
  - pbreit 12y ago
    But Move Loot was singled out by PH: "Hoover confirmed 3 deals that have been sourced on ProductHunt: Move Loot, FitBay, TapTalk"
    - 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
      The OP made the bold claim, "ProductHunt Is Quickly Becoming the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investment Opportunities", suggested that 206 investments "might have been sourced on Product Hunt", put together a meaningless table showing a handful of companies and the amount of time between their appearance on ProductHunt and funding (which doesn't speak to where these investments were sourced), and then at the end of her post noted that she had no evidence to back up her claim. If you're going to make what amounts to a causation claim ("ProductHunt Is Quickly Becoming the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investment Opportunities"), noting at the end of a long post that you have no evidence of causation is kind of silly.
      - pbreit 12y ago
        Did you see the quote I provided?
alixaxel 12y ago
I actually didn't knew about PH till they picked up on my HN submission (namegrep.com), I must say that I really like their daily links, some great stuff there - for instance, how awesome is this http://theorangechef.com/ http://theorangechef.com/? :O I do have to agree with @willu tho, their commenting system is way too elitist. =(
jlees 12y ago
Hmm, I was expecting the end of the article to be an analysis of which investors are most active among ProductHunted-then-funded companies, not a list of the companies themselves. Unless I'm missing something, that's the most interesting piece of data in the whole analysis: effectively, "who reads and pays attention to PH?".

52 points by dmor 12y ago

> ProductHunt Is Quickly Becoming the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investment Opportunities > ...Product Hunt is an excellent sourcing tools for VCs looking to discover little known early stage startups. If ProductHunt is "quickly becoming the hot new destination for sourcing startup investment opportunities" it cannot also be "an excellent sourcing tools [sic] for VCs looking to discover little known early stage startups." Lack of awareness of startups listed on ProductHunt is inversely correlated with ProductHunt's popularity.

bdcravens 12y ago
I don't follow. Just because the featured startups are little-known doesn't necessarily correlate with ProductHunt's popularity. Perhaps PH has some secret sauce for finding startups no one knows about but are high quality, which would be great investment opportunities.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
  I think you misunderstood me. Put simply, ProductHunt's popularity means that once a startup hits ProductHunt, it's no longer "little known." There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the OP's suggestion that ProductHunt is a great sourcing tool for VCs looking for "little known" startups is flawed. If you're a VC compelled to find promising startups before every investor in the Valley knows about them, you now need to find startups before they are ProductHunted.

sparkzilla 12y ago

Did they open it up from Beta yet?

kirillzubovsky 12y ago

Let's be honest though, saying "potentially sourced" is really saying nothing at all. </grumpy grandpa>

rrhoover 12y ago
FYI, The 3 startups I tweeted about are confirmed. I've spoken directly with the investors.
- kirillzubovsky 12y ago
  Oh, I believe you on those three :) I suspect there's been a handful of others, if not many more, where investors decided to call up the startup after it was product-hunted. I am just not a big fan of link-baiting. If I am to spend time on an article, I want evidence, not speculation. Just me, maybe.

return0 12y ago

Sounds like an echo chamber

staunch 12y ago

I've checked the site a few times. The sidebar popup comments thing drives me nuts and I leave. People make fun for HN for being so simple but too clever is far worse.

james33 12y ago
How is it being too clever? That is one of my favorite things about the site. If you want to quickly check the comments, you can without leaving the page. If you want to open a few to check later, you can just Cmd/Ctrl+Click the comments link and it'll be on its own page.
- staunch 12y ago
  It's clever because it's a fancy and inferior alternative to browser tabs. Comments always show up in a partial width sidebar: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprites http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprites

willu 12y ago

I am a fan of ProductHunt and look forward to their emails. BUT I do have to gripe a bit about the current very limited, "exclusive" commenting system. I want to get real insights from people who have used the product/service being featured and instead it's usually just the guy who runs ProductHunt plus maybe one other friend or colleague who takes a couple of minutes to poke around providing pretty shallow feedback...and it's very rarely critical. Then an investor in the featured site/product chimes in about how awesome the team is. Not a lot of value there. Both consumers and founders would benefit from more openness.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rrhoover 12y ago
I hear you, willu! Currently the product isn't ready for completely open comments. It will get unwieldy if there are 100+ comments on each product and we don't have the team to handle potential spam yet. We're in the process of building an recommendation system so people in the community can invite new contributors (a la dribbble). Here's a screenshot: https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/480377375192932352 https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/480377375192932352 Thanks for your patience and sorry again to limit access but we're working to open it up!
- aclements18 12y ago
  First off Ryan, I think its a great platform. As a very frequent visitor to the site I would have to reiterate that it is frustrating that I can't really participate in the conversation where there is an aspect of the product that I would like to ask the founder more about. Hopefully you guys can create a way that doesn't result in spam, but feels a little more inclusive. IMHO, a good way to do the comments would be to focus on Q&A with the founders (or someone affiliated with the product) address the question. As a visitor I would like to easily be able to see which questions have been answered instead of scrolling around to piece together the conversation. Certainly looking forward to seeing what you have planned for PH.

pbreit 12y ago

What does "sourced" mean exactly? For example, MoveLoot was in YC W14 so hard to think it was sourced through PH.

7Figures2Commas 12y ago
"This list indicates a correlation between an investment announcement and the company being added to ProductHunt BEFORE announcing funding, but it does not describe causation." In other words, it means nothing. It's pure speculation shrouded in what purports to be some sort of statistical analysis. Which isn't surprising given some of the previous "analyses" from the OP's company.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473904
- pbreit 12y ago
  But Move Loot was singled out by PH: "Hoover confirmed 3 deals that have been sourced on ProductHunt: Move Loot, FitBay, TapTalk"
  - 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
    The OP made the bold claim, "ProductHunt Is Quickly Becoming the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investment Opportunities", suggested that 206 investments "might have been sourced on Product Hunt", put together a meaningless table showing a handful of companies and the amount of time between their appearance on ProductHunt and funding (which doesn't speak to where these investments were sourced), and then at the end of her post noted that she had no evidence to back up her claim. If you're going to make what amounts to a causation claim ("ProductHunt Is Quickly Becoming the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investment Opportunities"), noting at the end of a long post that you have no evidence of causation is kind of silly.
    - pbreit 12y ago
      Did you see the quote I provided?

alixaxel 12y ago

I actually didn't knew about PH till they picked up on my HN submission (namegrep.com), I must say that I really like their daily links, some great stuff there - for instance, how awesome is this http://theorangechef.com/ http://theorangechef.com/? :O I do have to agree with @willu tho, their commenting system is way too elitist. =(

jlees 12y ago

Hmm, I was expecting the end of the article to be an analysis of which investors are most active among ProductHunted-then-funded companies, not a list of the companies themselves. Unless I'm missing something, that's the most interesting piece of data in the whole analysis: effectively, "who reads and pays attention to PH?".