
Product Hunt Gets $6.1M Series A Funding from A16Z and Alexis Ohanian - lalwanivikas
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/08/product-hunt-gets-6-1-million-series-a-funding-from-a16z-and-alexis-ohanian/
======
minimaxir
I am _really_ not a fan of PH because I don't _trust it at all_ (previous
longer rant:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8362759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8362759)).
Votes are gamed when everyone is _spamming_ for upvotes on Twitter
([https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=product%20hunt%20upv...](https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=product%20hunt%20upvote&src=typd))
although Ryan mentioned in replies to previous rant that he would "write a
bullet point in the FAQ about asking for upvotes," which won't stop it at all.

Addiitonally, there's an unusual amount of pandering, to use an apt word, to
Product Hunt / Ryan Hoover in submissions to PH ("We have special Product Hunt
functionality/branding in our product and Ryan took a quirky selfie while
using it! That means we're awesome!") The problem with that this distracts
from _actually objectively good products_ , a counterpoint to PH's mission to
"find the best products," and it shouldn't be a surprise that many top PH
submissions end up fading into obscurity, which is a disservice to everyone.

~~~
ajiang
Isn't this a problem that can be easily fixed in the same way that HN looks
for vote rigging? Seems like one week of work in putting in a fraud detection
/ collusion / vote weighting system. Also seems to be just a minor growing
pain, a feature just ignored so far because it hasn't been important to work
on, but once it becomes a bigger concern by the community, I can't think of a
good reason why it wouldn't be resolved.

Pandering is hard to stop, but again as the community matures, you'll likely
see counter culture develop in the community in the same way HN commenters
complain about the first comment to any article being a negative response
about the submitted content ;)

~~~
andreasklinger
We have anti-vote-ring and anti-vote-spam in place. Similar to HN actually.
They and also people of the reddit team help us a lot.

Additionally we have a moderator team that additionally looks for in-balanced
behaviour.

I understand that a lot of people are asking on twitter for upvotes - so far
we are able to filter those in the rankings. We are considering to communicate
the policies even more public - but step by step.

Disclaimer: CTO @ PH.

~~~
minimaxir
Interesting. This needs to be stated publicly and transparently.

Your assertion that "HN/Reddit are secretive" doesn't work for PH since PH
puts a larger emphasis on real-life identity and impact. (HN has recently been
more public with how it operates too.). Case in point, my parent post has 12
points. This _is_ the perception of Product Hunt.

~~~
andreasklinger
I didnt disagree with you. And also you are right about the fact that we need
to better communicate our policy regarding upvote requests.

So far we have had the upper hand with ranking adjustment. But the fact that
you believe it's mainly gamed - shows that we have to do a lot of work in
improving our communication.

------
Alex3917
So just as a data point, I actually co-founded a YC startup a few years ago
that was working on a similar problem. On paper it seems like a promising
space because there are 300 - 500k new consumer products launched each year in
the US, not including media titles.

What we found though was that probably 98% of these products were completely
commodified, as in a new brand of 2% milk or a new kind of paperclips. We
would go to industry events with, say, 20,000 CPG food products, but of those
there were maybe only 5 - 10 per year that were interesting enough to actually
be worth talking about. And even reaching out to contract manufacturers
directly to get new products at the very beginning of the pipeline yielded
limited results.

We were actually offered funding, but ended up shutting down the startup
instead because we found that while we could make money doing bespoke projects
for companies with large budgets, the market just wasn't there to build the
products that we initially wanted to build. If Product Hunt can innovate on
the lead gen though then it's definitely cool space, and I'm excited to see
what they can come up with.

------
xpose2000
I have two things to say.

1\. I agree with what minimaxir said. It seems like friends of friends of
friends control the entire place. HN seems less "controlled" than PH. Even
Ryan himself went above and beyond to make sure that Alexis' friends were able
to comment right off the bat.
([https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/489931085048860672](https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/489931085048860672))
In hindsight, this paid off since he got funding and I don't blame him. But to
the average user who has been waiting to comment - it's incredibly
frustrating.

And why the heck is commenting disabled by default anyway? Why does it sound
like a good idea to only allow friends of friends a voice to comment? Provide
some type of "participant threshold", and then allow everyone to comment and
block those who abuse it.

2\. They got 6.1M in funding. I am not from the startup "funding" ilk, but
that sounds like a ridiculously high number to me. What could they possibly be
building that requires that much capital? The site and premise of it now is
fairly simple to implement and code. Perhaps they have grand plans that are
way above my head?

~~~
opendais
> 2\. They got 6.1M in funding. I am not from the startup "funding" ilk, but
> that sounds like a ridiculously high number to me. What could they possibly
> be building that requires that much capital? The site and premise of it now
> is fairly simple to implement and code. Perhaps they have grand plans that
> are way above my head?

The only thing I can think of is competing with AngelList as it operates in a
neighboring market with alot of customer overlap.

People interested in VC, Startups, Jobs @ Startups.

~~~
brentm
They have to be rolling out Product Hunt for X. There are a lot of verticals
where it will be way bigger than this one. They'll need a lot of capital to
roll these verticals out before everyone else does. Look at Stack Overflow and
their large network of somewhat independent niche sites.

------
bluker
_How is Product Hunt any different from HN?_ HN has already created a culture
of upvoting the best tech products from people who know their shit. I may be
naive but how can the PH experience improve upon the already exceptional HN
experience?

~~~
kristofferR
Product Hunt is about Products, Hacker News is about News.

~~~
minimaxir
That's a false dichotomy. There's a reason "Show HN" exists and has existed
for years.

~~~
kristofferR
"Show HN" is for showing your own work.

It's not for submitting cool products you find, like PH is. People would hate
it if "Show HN" turned into Product Hunt, and the submitters weren't always
behind what was being shown there.

~~~
minimaxir
Given the amount of terrible Medium posts which try to compare traffic from
Product Hunt and Hacker News, I wouldn't argue that difference:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=product+hunt+hacker+news#!/story/s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=product+hunt+hacker+news#!/story/sort_by_date/0/product%20hunt%20hacker%20news)

------
NicoJuicy
Lol, 6.1M for a HN-alternative for products (and the HN original has been
created by one guy solely).

That's pretty sick :s

~~~
NicoJuicy
PS. I made a HN with Tags and custom input fields (it's not completely
finished yet)... I thought about selling it for 8 K. (already have a client)

But if anyone want's to give a million, i can get arround the NDA.

Fyi, it's made with Asp.Net MVC, a JS View Engine and i'm not kidding either.
Lower bids are also welcome.

------
brianbreslin
Key questions I have: Does product hunt generate any revenue currently ? (I
know it isn't directly related to valuation, just curious) How big is the
current team?

~~~
vishalzone2002
not sure about any revenue. But I guess they are 9 right now. Ryan sent out a
blog article about his journey in his newsletter today :
[https://medium.com/on-startups/the-artifacts-of-product-
hunt...](https://medium.com/on-startups/the-artifacts-of-product-
hunt-11682e9e01dd)

------
gfodor
Something tells me they try to avoid saying the name aloud

------
korzun
This is the same play as PandoDaily. Free channel of press for VC's and their
connections.

------
lolwutf
My frustration with Product Hunt is that it gives underperforming biz folks a
whole new shiny label to add to their resume: Product Nerd!

'Product Nerd' = professional opinion giver = get back to work!

------
giarc
I browse PH everyday, however it seems like I only need to do it once. The
list seems stagnant; it looks the same at 9am as it does at 5pm. So unlike HN,
reddit, FB I spend maybe 3-4 minutes on PH. I would like to see their metrics
on site visitation to see if perhaps others share this issue.

------
wastedhours
Congrats to Ryan. Am assuming there's a biz dev play here, what do we think?
Affiliate revenue, "featured" products, native advertising curated lists (e.g.
Samsung sponsors a list of cool Android apps...)?

~~~
AznHisoka
featured products make the most sense. In the end, they're all a form of
native advertising.

------
ilghiro
I love ProductHunt. A lot. Many lots. I take a look at it most days.

At the end of the day though it's just a good list. There's no barrier to
entry and as soon as they add in any revenue streams that justify a huge
valuation (which I certainly can't figure out anyway) then what's to stop
"Product Hunt - No Ads" from stealing the "market"?

------
ljk
the third highest voted product on the page right now is a $125 monitor
stand....

~~~
ilghiro
the second highest voted product is a newsletter

------
higherpurpose
Am I having a deja-vu or did this already happen a month ago?

~~~
petercooper
They raised $1m about a month ago: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/21/product-
hunt-announces-seed...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/21/product-hunt-
announces-seed-funding-round-launches-ios-app/) .. so I'm guessing total is
now $7.1m with the newly announced $6.1m? (Unless they were separately
announced parts of the same round.)

