By tradition, every first day of the month I open hunted.space and scroll back through previous years. Today, I checked October 2024 and what I saw was fascinating.
Unlike September 2024 (which was crazy strong in 2024: six products over 1000 upvotes, 6 more than 900 upvotes and more than ten over 800), October looked very different.
Only one single product passed 1000 upvotes: bolt.new (with exactly 1003) which has been performing brilliantly and organized the largest online hackathon a few months ago.
The AI gold rush feels like it rewards teams who ship fast. Many teams are working on a 9-9-6 (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) schedule to keep up with the state of the art breakthroughs and features. Does this give teams an edge against their competition or is this slowly burning teams out. If you're building in the AI space, I would love to hear what your take is:
What works for your team and do you follow the 996 schedule?
Did following a 996 culture create more bugs or actually lead to breakthroughs and push you ahead of your competition?
How would you balance your life outside of work if you followed this schedule?
Making this post to raise awareness and ideally find a middle ground for teams that are currently growing and trying to keep up with the competition
I've recently seen more cities that are growing teams and building offices that seem to be growing rapidly? SF seems like it's one of many hubs that have been growing in the recent years. I'm trying to see which cities people are looking into and where people think will be the next startup hub? I've seen mixed opinions on cities like New York and Toronto but would love to hear what other people think as well!
I launched my SaaS company, Encharge, in 2019 with less than $1,000 in my account, no funding, no network, no audience, and no accelerators. It generated $2 million before we sold it. Here are 17 things I learned from it.
1. Startups are a last-man-standing game.
The one to win is not the fastest, smartest, or best. It's the most persistent and resilient.
Today, I am co-organising my first hackathon in my country, and I will give a talk to the participants about Product Hunt as one of the ways to distribute a product.
Some participants may hear about the platform for the first time, and I would like to encourage them a little in building and launching products.
Curious how other founders have approached events in the early days. I know for some, hackathons, expos, and pitch competitions are game-changers: early validation, first users, even investors. But for others, they end up being more of a distraction than a getting-early-traction opportunity.
So, I'm curious to know:
Did you include events in your early marketing/growth strategy?
What s the most rewarding event you ve ever participated in with your startup?
Everywhere else I look podcasts, social media, even casual discussions longevity is a hot topic. Bryan Johnson, for example, shows up in my feed constantly.
For me, health-tech feels like the most valuable thing we could be building. Not just extending life expectancy, but actually improving quality of life.
Now you can edit designs in Figma using text prompts on the canvas. This AI-powered feature is still evolving, and your testing and feedback will help shape what's next.
Hey there, 3 days ago I successfully published my first product on Product Hunt with 0 Social media presence. I got place #13 out of 307 submissions this day. I call this a successful launch and wanna share my experience and insights with you.
Our first Product Hunt launch didn t go well. We put something out there, pushed for votes, and hoped for the best. It didn t work.
For our relaunch, we took a completely different approach. Here s what changed:
Engage, don t just post. We spent weeks commenting on other launches, supporting makers, and building trust. This time, people recognized us, not just the product.
Conversations > upvotes. What made the difference were detailed comments and feedback. The algorithm rewards authentic engagement.
Storytelling > specs. Instead of listing features, we shared why we built it and the problem it solved.
Timing is everything. Launching at midnight PST gave us momentum when the U.S. audience woke up.
Expectation reset. PH is less a sales channel, more a credibility engine. The real ROI shows up later, in awareness, trust, and partnerships.
What stood out the most: The community. The honest feedback, encouragement, and tough questions shaped our roadmap more than any internal discussion could.
We ve been working heads-down the past few weeks on a big revamp of Escape Velocity AI, a browser-based business consultant that helps founders stress-test business plans, run financial models, and challenge assumptions (without the cost of a McKinsey team).
Exactly one week from now, I ll be co-organising a tech event (a hackathon), and I m realising how much work it actually takes. I ve been to many conferences myself to gather inspiration, but I still can t come close to what I ve experienced as an attendee. Maybe that s also because we re organising it as just a 3-person team.
If you ve been to hackathons or other tech events before, what made a positive impression on you?
Lessons from Athena s surprising coverage and what founders can learn about finding the right reporter, framing stories, and pitching press
The Wall Street Journal rarely covers seed-stage startups let alone one raising just $2.2M. That s why I was surprised to see Athena, an early-stage company working on how large language models surface brand-related content, featured in Katherine Blunt s article about the demise of traditional Google search.
