
ProductHunt is the Hot New Destination for Sourcing Startup Investments - dmor
http://mattermark.com/data-crush-producthunt-is-quickly-becoming-the-hot-new-destination-for-sourcing-startup-investment-opportunities/
======
willu
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.

~~~
rrhoover
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
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.

~~~
rrhoover
Thanks for the feedback -- I too really like the conversations with
founders/builders.

I'm actually testing threaded comments in staging right now (might release
today) and soon after we are adding a "badge" next to the founder's name so
that it's clear who made it.

~~~
sixQuarks
Ryan, how does one submit a product for consideration (assuming they actually
have a good product to submit)?

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7Figures2Commas
> 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
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
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.

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jlees
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?".

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staunch
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
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
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)

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

~~~
rrhoover
FYI, The 3 startups I tweeted about are confirmed. I've spoken directly with
the investors.

~~~
kirillzubovsky
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
Sounds like an echo chamber

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

~~~
7Figures2Commas
"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
But Move Loot was singled out by PH: "Hoover confirmed 3 deals that have been
sourced on ProductHunt: Move Loot, FitBay, TapTalk"

~~~
7Figures2Commas
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
Did you see the quote I provided?

~~~
7Figures2Commas
Yes, I did. We seem to be talking past each other.

Through manual detective work, Ryan Hoover was able to confirm that _three_
companies (out of the several thousand that have appeared on ProductHunt)
raised funding after being discovered on ProductHunt. Instead of doing the
same sort of detective work, the OP, on the other hand, wrote up a post with a
broad, bold claim, put together a bunch of statistics unrelated to validating
said claim, and then added the caveat that her statistics did not show the
causation her claim required.

Put simply, to establish that ProductHunt is widely being used for deal
sourcing, you would need to contact the startups and/or investors and ask
them. At that point, you could compare the number of startups that have
appeared on ProductHunt to the number of deals that were sourced through
ProductHunt and draw a legitimate, meaningful conclusion about ProductHunt's
popularity as a sourcing tool.

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alixaxel
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. =(

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sparkzilla
Did they open it up from Beta yet?

