Alex Goldwyn

Just finished my product and quickly learned that building it was the easy part. Starting with zero followers or email list makes getting those initial sales feel almost impossible. There are so many channels to try but most feel like shouting into the void. If you started from scratch did cold messages posting in online groups or something else actually get people to pay?

Scrolling through today's launches, noticed a solo dev with under 500 followers sitting right next to a product backed by a known team with thousands of followers ready to vote within the first hour. Same leaderboard, very different starting lines.

Makes me wonder if Product Hunt's ranking genuinely rewards the product, or mostly rewards whoever can mobilize the most people fastest on launch day. A great solo product without a network behind it seems to need a lot more luck, timing, or a lucky external traffic source like YouTube or Reddit picking it up.

how others think about this. Should newer makers avoid launching against bigger funded teams if possible, or does timing not really matter since quality eventually finds its audience anyway?

My first major product launch was an absolute mental roller coaster. I was so paranoid about things breaking that I stayed up all night checking the listing page then spent the entire morning glued to live visitor stats.

It realized pretty quickly that obsessing over every single view is totally unsustainable.