First of all, I want to thank you for voting for us in yesterday's launch - you still can, the week is not over. HERE

Second thing, I summarised some things that I realised, reflected on, and maybe should have known sooner:

We keep shipping...

Just launched: Refine V2

This has been the most requested feature since we launched Pretty Prompt last May here in PH.

Hey Product Hunt!

Weeks ago, I caught myself doom-scrolling at 2 AM again.

Same routine, same procrastination, same feeling of being stuck.

Hey Product Hunt!

I'm a solo developer who got into building apps after realizing I was stuck in the same autopilot loops for years doomscrolling at 2 AM, procrastinating on meaningful work, telling myself "I'll start Monday."

The greatest invention of our time the smartphone has also become one of the biggest consumers of our energy and attention.

Being focused is now an art.

We sold $300k in 60 days. Fully bootstrapped.

This is the story of how we stayed alive, and replaced our pre-seed with actual sales.

Two months ago, we ran a lifetime deal on AppSumo.
The outcome?
- 5,000+ new users
- Over 100 5-star reviews
- A full year of runway
Lifetime deals feel scary.
How can you know what will happen to your startup when you don t even know what you ll have for breakfast tomorrow?
But if the definition of a founder is staying alive,
we did what we had to do to stay alive.
And I m so fricking proud of what we ve built so far.
No VCs.
No Harvard.
No pitch decks.
Just us, a Chrome Extension, and our customers.
People are loving Pretty Prompt.
And saying things like:
"The best tool I have purchased over the years".
"Paid for itself in the first week."
Wrote the full story here: https://prettypromptai.substack....
Here s to the next 12 months, fully backed by our customers

Guys, a couple of hours ago, the author of this problem, which he published on ProblemHunt about four months ago, wrote. Here is the essence of his message:

 Hello! We've partnered with one of the market leaders in our segment. We had negotiations today we're integrating into their ecosystem for mutual growth and development. Soon our solution will be available to their audience. We did it! 

This isn't a unicorn story. Rather, it's an example of a sustainable micro-SaaS for a niche audience and a local market. Although who knows?

OSS AI coding assistant @Kilo Code is launching today. This is their 3rd launch on @Product Hunt.

Over the past few days, I ve been trying to understand what helped the most successful launches stand out.

In general, here s what I noticed they tend to share:

• Their Product Hunt page had at least 500 followers.

• The product was in overall good condition (I mean, already had some level of reputation, really good marketing).

• Many were hunted by well-established, well-known hunters on the platform.

• Every comment received a response.

• The visuals were strong there was almost always a video or demo featured at the beginning of the carousel.

We re getting ready for our second Product Hunt launch on Jan 31, and a post by @busmark_w_nika got me thinking.

What to do (that we didn't do the first time):

• Plan your launch. What does it mean?

  • Write down everything you need to do before you launch.

  • Cleaning your copy

  • Your product images

  • Your product video (demo under 60 seconds if you can)

  • For our first launch, we didn't do anything. Even though we got 2nd Product of the Day, I would not recommend others to leave it to their luck. Plan and maximize your chances of success.

• Keep it simple, stupid.

  • Don't overcomplicate your page with lots of marketing language.

  • Simplicity, clean product screenshots, and clear language.

  • I think this is the single most important thing to take into account when launching, and why we probably did so well on our first launch.

    • Ask yourself: Does the tagline make sense? Will others understand what the product does and what it is in under 10 seconds?

    • For us at @Pretty Prompt: Grammarly for prompting. (Grammarly = it is an extension.) Improve prompts in one click. (super clear what it does).

    • You can straight away visualise how you might use the product and what it will do for you.

• Focus on your strengths.

  • Don't give everything you got in one go.

  • Earn the right for people to read and scroll down. Read and scroll down.

  • Save some stuff for your pinned post.

  • People have a short attention span.

  • Hook people on your most important feature, showcase it front and centre, don't give me everything together cos I'll forget, and also I'll get lost.

  • For us at @Pretty Prompt: Improve your prompts in one click. Works inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Lovable, and more.

  • Even though you have about 10 other features on Pretty Prompt, we don't talk about them right in the beginning; we just feature that one "killer feature" and let users dive deeper afterwards.

• Product assets = show, don't tell.

  • Your images and video should be about your product.

  • Don't make it marketing-heavy. Make it product-heavy.

  • Show me what the product does, don't tell me about it.

  • For us: 60-second demo video actually using the tool. Screenshots of the top features (Improve - Refine - Save - History). Not fancy Figma designs, I mean screenshots of the actual product.

  • If you get big like Notion, Cursor, Claude, etc. you may also be able to add a more human video of you talking about the product, or new functionality, your story, etc. But for the majority, just show your product, and let the product win.

• Learn from others.

  • Though no two products or launches are the same, you can learn from others and pick the best things that fit your own product.

  • Checkout this post by @fmerian on "The Cursor Way to Launch". Great tips.

• Warm up the Audience.

  • Don't just rely on your followers.

  • Use as many channels as possible to maximise the reach and get people excited about your launch, even before you launch.

  • If you do this step well, the launch is just 50% of the job, and you're already a step ahead of most.

  • For us: I did a community post, Substack one, LinkedIn one, Slack one. We'll be recording a founder video too. I want it to be as human as possible; people buy into people.

It s almost here for me. In three days, I ll be relaunching a major update for the app I have been collaborating with, and I ve set clear boundaries for myself about what I will and won t do before the launch. I guess these are some general, unwritten rules I try to follow

Definitely DON T:

• Accept offers from charlatans promising votes or engagement for money

• Send unsolicited messages begging for votes or support

• Spam other people s posts with launch announcements

I came to exactly the same conclusion that real startup ideas often come from simple and boring problems. From my own experience: I spent three years on a startup that was supposed to revolutionize online education, but in the end it had 0 users. Now I ve just started solving a simple problem for home appliance repair technicians and immediately got my first paying users on a very rough MVP.

Many people were looking for an answer in one category, namely, Forums Streaks.

This metric by itself only tells you that people log in to the app.