Many of you sometimes write to me in DMs asking how to position yourself on Product Hunt.

From the question, I always get the feeling that people want to speed up the process, publish something quickly, get a high position in the ranking of launched products and a badge. But this is a long-term game.

I'm hitting a wall trying to gain alpha users for a live app with a fairly specific use-case.

My fear of becoming "Spammy McSpamerson" has been so strong that I've paralyzed myself into doing nothing. I had been responding with useful advice here and there but I'm not sure when or how to bring up my solution.

I'd love tips from founders who've successfully used Reddit to naturally connect with people who genuinely need their product. How did you find the right communities, contribute meaningfully, and know when it was appropriate to share?

I noticed this question in one of my discussions and thought it would make sense to share my approach if I were to get in touch with more active users of this platform.

Here s how I would find them and connect with them (via X, LinkedIn or other channel) You can find them :

1. Check people who log in daily (Streaks).

2. Look at users who actively comment under discussions and launches.

3. Connect with active hunters.

4. You can try reaching out to the internal Product Hunt team.

5. Explore WA, Telegram, and Signal PH groups where people are active and reach out to them.

6. Check users who launch a few days before you they re likely to put effort into the platform too, so they still have that "launching vibe".

I am curious how people actually do it.

There are tons of stories about founders launching SaaS products without an existing audience. No Twitter following, no newsletter, no community, nothing. Yet some still manage to get early traction and even hit real MRR.

If you have started from zero, I would love to hear:

• How you got your first users

• What channels brought the earliest traction

• Whether cold outreach works or not

• If content played a role or if you focused mainly on building

• What you would do differently if you had to start again

Serious question.

I'm at that stage where I'm doing category education (which, iykyk, is a hard slog). Some days I think "this is obvious, why doesn't everyone see it?" Other days I wonder if I'm completely off base.

The thing about category creation is you're not selling something people know they need. You're teaching them to see a problem differently.

So, maybe the right amount of delusion is enough to keep building when no one's listening yet. But not so much that you ignore useful feedback?

I'm an old school developer but have been building my first AI platform. Most of the development is familiar (i.e. basic systems architecture work hasn't changed much) but I ve run into some counter-intuitive (for me) stuff

• Too much instruction gives the model more ways to fail; too little leaves it without guidance for your use case, so it s a careful ongoing curation process.

• There's a tension between what seems most helpful to the user and what is economically sustainable for the product.

• Every free user plays into your business model and conversion rate calculations, dictating how robust your freemium model can be.

I m now seeing token management as a core part of UX. There s an article about the tradeoffs on my profile if anyone wants to join me down this rabbit hole, but

How are other builders thinking about this? Have you had to make tough choices about gating features or using multi-model architectures to make the numbers work?

Hey Product Hunt - I'm Dorothy.

Solo founder working from home in suburban Philly. Chickens in the yard, cavalier pup on the couch, teens who may or may not be in their rooms.

I've built products and strategy for companies like Comcast, Schwab, and Merck. Took a broadband startup to IPO, co-founded a national nonprofit with $300M+ impact.

I'm working on a SaaS platform and exploring whether Product Hunt is the right place to launch. But mostly I'm here to connect with founders thinking about human-centered AI: not just efficiency, but how we design systems that amplify human judgment instead of replacing it.

I ve noticed two main narratives in how companies view their competitors.

Either it s a fight to the death approach exactly like what we see between Replit and Lovable (though it seems Replit does more of the provoking ) basically: We speak badly about our competition.

Are you the kind of person who believes in your dream enough to burn through most of your savings on it?

For millionaires, this might not be a big deal, but what about people with a typical 9 5 job? I see how much a solid marketing campaign costs on just one platform (often the monthly expense is equal to at least a full year s salary).

The day before yesterday, a friend told me he and his wife are closing their restaurant, which they opened just six months ago. They had taken a loan for it, which makes it even worse.

I ve been thinking about how much design quality actually matters in the earliest stages of a product.

Some users don t seem to mind rough edges if the tool genuinely solves a problem. Others instantly bounce if the UI doesn t feel trustworthy.

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.

Hi everyone, Gabe here! I lead curating Product Hunt's leaderboard.

First thing I will say is that if I could feature every single product that works, I would. I love supporting makers and demoing products. I actually try to test every single thing that gets hunted every day... which is A TON.  But I view our job as to surface the most interesting, novel, useful, and innovative products - daily. Now we may not always get it right, the process isn't perfect, but we're trying to do right by the community.

Hi everyone, Gabe here! I lead curating Product Hunt's leaderboard.

First thing I will say is that if I could feature every single product that works, I would. I love supporting makers and demoing products. I actually try to test every single thing that gets hunted every day... which is A TON.  But I view our job as to surface the most interesting, novel, useful, and innovative products - daily. Now we may not always get it right, the process isn't perfect, but we're trying to do right by the community.