
How Product Hunt really works - brw12
https://medium.com/@benjiwheeler/how-product-hunt-really-works-d8fdcda1da74
======
phantom_oracle
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
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
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.

~~~
adrtessier
> PH presents as egalitarian and meritocratic, but that's clearly horseshit.

From my experiences, Product Hunt is largely a byproduct of a greater scene in
which this is very often the case. It is one of the things I dislike most
about Silicon Valley, and is something I have tried hard to make sure I can
avoid in some way or another. I have been better or worse at it at different
times.

There appears to be a strong component of success-by-networking in the tech
industry that I have tried to opt out of, largely because I am afraid that if
I get too deep into the networking games, I will begin to lose an objective
sense of what I can accomplish technically, and no longer be able to
personally calibrate for myself whether or not my work can stand successfully
on its own. I bought into a lot of the rhetoric of the endless meritocracy
early on, and found the wizard behind the curtain is still often based upon
the ol' boys club. Deciding to take this approach has probably hurt my career
as a developer in many ways.

This type of stuff is why I have been afraid for years to contribute to sites
like Hacker News, even though I have been lurking on this site for five or six
years. It's a weird situation for an introvert, to want to be able to
contribute to a community I have extracted so much value from, in hopes of
adding some back to it in whatever way I can, but also being somewhat
terrified of getting absorbed into the echo chamber.

~~~
dikdik
Isn't PH just another example of the typical business cycle? Found a startup,
get big, get bought out/go public, turn into crap, then another startup is
founded to attempt to dethrone you, repeat ad infinitum.

------
minimaxir
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=...](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)

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-
kingma...](http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup-kingmaker-
faces-charges-of-elitism/)) 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.

~~~
shostack
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
PH can feel a lot like a popularity contest and a SV insider's club, not like
a democratization of launch.

------
birken
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)

~~~
awakeasleep
Stripe insiders have been leaking sales numbers and fraud numbers of stripe
merchants to the press lately. (Without permission from the merchants).

None of those articles have been successful on Hacker News, despite the fact
that they are materially important to many of our businesses. (When and why
are businesses metrics and Stripe support emails leaked to the press? Was that
against company policy? Has the issue that caused it been addressed?)

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/steal-a-credit-
card-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/steal-a-credit-card-buy-a-
hoverboard)

~~~
pc
(Stripe's CEO here.) It is ​ _emphatically_ ​ against our policy. The employee
involved was identified before the article was published and they no longer
work at Stripe.

~~~
markdown
Why do we not know who he is? Is it not a crime in the US to leak/steal data
and leak it to third parties?

You've released this scumbag back into the pool to continue his shenanigans
elsewhere.

You've covered your ass, and now he's someone else's problem, right?

~~~
joncalhoun
My guess would be they are covering their bases legally.

I have heard several stories from small business owners who fire an employee
who was stealing or committing some other crime, but they don't actively tell
anyone who calls for a reference because they don't want to open themselves up
to legal issues.

Even if Stripe can prove that the person did this, potential lawsuits could be
incredibly distracting and expensive.

------
OoTheNigerian
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/matte...](http://www.producthunt.com/tech/mattermark-4#!/s/posts/mattermark)).
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!

------
brw12
Interested in your thoughts, HN. I tried to write from a place of compassion
and not be all haterating.

~~~
bronson
Matter-of-fact writing and great images. Very well done.

And I think you've just made Product Hunt insiders a lot more popular...

------
mootothemax
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
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 :).

------
tptacek
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?

~~~
mintplant
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.

------
sparkzilla
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
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
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.

------
throwaway415
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?

------
sharkweek
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
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 ;-)

------
onewaystreet
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.

------
wuliwong
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

------
ryanSrich
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.

~~~
minimaxir
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
Correction: HN mods often flag posts down. Almost on a very regular basis.
They do this for the larger good.

~~~
minimaxir
No, those are mostly by users. And in the case where an article is falsely
flagged to death, the new vouch system corrects that.

~~~
mintplant
I thought the "vouch" system only applied to dead things. Is that not correct?

~~~
detaro
You can only vouch once something has become flagged, but then it works
against the flags. (and if only a few users have flagged a post, it is likely
to become unflagged by that)

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

~~~
minimaxir
No. Reddit's front page ranking has no hidden metagaming from the mods. (The
most they can do is hide it)

~~~
siegecraft
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
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.

------
michaelbuckbee
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
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.

------
cromwellian
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
yes - Polyvore had massive fanbase north of 25m monthly users

~~~
cromwellian
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
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

------
zenlikethat
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.

------
marshray
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?

------
joshmn
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.

------
volaski
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
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.

~~~
volaski
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.

~~~
dang
> _Yes theoretically it shouldn 't work, but I see it work everyday_

I'm pretty sure this is not true (certainly the method you mention doesn't
work), but if you think you know counterexamples, please send them to
hn@ycombinator.com. We have put a ton of work into counteracting promotional
voting a.k.a. voting rings, and genuine counterexamples (i.e. voting rings
that defeated our software) are super valuable to us.

~~~
volaski
Can you give a transparent answer to this scenario?: Let's say I posted a
"Show HN". I would email my friends who are HN users, telling them "hey guys i
posted something on hacker news, please go to the front page, find a post
titled __* and upvote! " I just can't think of a robust way to detect this.

~~~
dang
I'm pretty sure that doesn't work. But obviously I can't tell you why, or
people would soon start getting around it.

Again, eager for counterexamples if anyone knows of any.

------
lsniddy
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?

~~~
tomasien
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
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.

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

------
kilimchoi
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
false

------
odbol
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.

------
aagha
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)

------
nodesocket
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
Pay into honest systems then. Why feed something you know is rigged?

------
nedwin
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
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.

------
tomasien
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
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
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.

------
forrestthewoods
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...

------
hoodoof
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.

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

------
oelmekki
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.

------
jbob2000
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.

~~~
vogt
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
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?

~~~
vogt
The due diligence comes after filming. The deals you see on TV are a handshake
deal and in my estimation only about 30-40% of them actually end up going
through because a lot of founders lie about things like being litigated
against, having tax liens on their company, etc. The sharks all have people on
staff who sniff these problems out and make sure everything the founders say
about their numbers are true.

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

------
callmeed
_> 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.

------
hoodoof
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)

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

------
brw12
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
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.

------
chanux
Does anybody know how to delete a product hunt account?

PS: Apparently you have to email hello@producthunt.com

------
altonzheng
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.

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

~~~
minimaxir
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.

------
quintin
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.

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

------
manigandham
And now there's [https://www.openhunt.co/](https://www.openhunt.co/)

------
aagha
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)

------
varunjuice
Product hunt is native advertising.

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

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

------
artur_makly
How Meta is this?

------
sagivo
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.

------
anon8418
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
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.

~~~
anon8418
I've edited my post so that it appears less of a personal attack.

I think my critique is fair, though the delivery could use improvement (hence
my edits).

PH is a for-profit company that helps users discover new products, yet
controls and hides the process for how voting, submission, etc., work. It's a
fair critique to question if the point of PH is to derive value for themselves
from establishing themselves as gatekeepers rather than generating value in a
more "normal" sense.

Meritocracy, transparency, and fairness are values that are particularly held
in high esteem in the valley and here on HN. So I think those who run contrary
to this, should be exposed to the harshest of scrutiny.

We need to keep each other honest. RH might construe this as "hating" but I
think it's fair game.

~~~
dang
I appreciate the edit and your polite response, but (if I may say so
personally, as opposed to qua moderator) the thrust of what you're saying
still feels uncharitable.

I've met Ryan, and my impression was that he's a true enthusiast—he just loves
this stuff. And there's strong objective evidence for it too: someone who was
primarily interested in building a rigged system for insider gain would never
have been able to get a community going in the first place. Real online
communities are rare. It takes a believer to start one.

As for PH now, I don't know any details, but from other experience I can
guarantee you that the challenges in getting it right are (a) harder and (b)
different than one would imagine. Reading a thread like this about one's baby
(which it's possible Ryan may) is a hard experience, but at least if the
criticisms are substantive, you can feed them into your efforts to improve.
When someone just seems to be saying mean or generically cynical things,
though, that sucks.

~~~
anon8418
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and view. I appreciate the feedback and your
even-handed moderation.

I don't know Ryan, but I've been observing PH for some time now. My opinions
and thoughts are from these observations and those of others in the community.

I'm sure Ryan is a good person, with good intentions. Those good intentions
stands in stark contrast to how PH works today. There have been other PH
critics and from what I've seen RH has not been super open to those
criticisms, and in fact, even going so far as to dismiss any critics as
"haters" (which I think is a bit of a mislabel since many of his critics are
in fact fans that are just opposed to the lack of transparency).

So I think given, its fair to address these failings. Perhaps I can use nicer
language, but I trust that Ryan is a mature adult and can take it.

I do see your point about people saying mean things and how that can hurt, but
c'mon, life is not fair or kind or nice. And we're not delicate butterflies.

Putting ourselves out there (to be celebrated and vilified) is part of the
very nature of entrepreneurship / creation. I see the problems of suicides and
mental health in our community (and I've definitely experienced and am still
experiencing it first hand), but being overly cautious in our words to not-
offend is not a solution to this problem. Somewhat off-topic but related,
South Park this season did a great job of making fun of this.

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

