We came in #3! Lessons learned:

Ste
21 replies
Last Saturday we launched Hardcover on PH. It was an amazing day, we had almost 300 votes which is huge for us. I want to share some learnings, as someone who works on a product that doesn't have an audience native to ProductHunt. 1. A clear description goes a long way Our marketing resources are limited, we're way more focused on building. So what you can do to make sure you get a lot of votes from people just browsing the products of the day is to have a clear description. 2. Explain to your audience what PH is This might seem obvious, but we've also realized that we were posting about our ProductHunt launch without people actually knowing what ProductHunt was. Or what 'support' meant. So we made sure we included 'a place for great products to get discovered' in most of our posts. 3. Share your mission We didn't just say what Hardcover is, and what it does for readers, but also our mission and long-term vision. You'll find many people relate to that more than they relate to features. 4. Post your founder story In many places outside PH, just posting about your launch can be annoying. On Reddit for example I posted about how I ended up working on Hardcover with Adam, our challenges, and how we made everything work. That mattered more than 'we're launching [x]' and people genuinely got interested in the story. 5. Clarity > accuracy We do a lot of things at Hardcover. If we were to talk about all of them, it would get confusing. This is a classic YC lesson, between being accurate and being clear, always choose clarity. It's mad how easy it is to mess this up with just a few wrong words, so be careful. I think those are the things that worked for us. Of course, try to be present and reply all day long. I was GMT, Adam was Mountain time, so we could cover responding to comments all day long. Hope this helped and good luck with your launch!

Replies

Adam Fortuna
(Cofounder here) One other thing that I think seriously helped was professional design branding. Between our logo and our screenshots on ProductHunt, we looked like a serious product - not an MVP that was launching. That first impression gave people a reason to keep reading.
Julia Chacur
@adamfortuna that is very interesting Adam, I tend to agree that professional branding goes a long way. I'm preparing to launch a product and your comment got me thinking about this potential initial investment. Thanks for sharing!
Ste
Got way more votes after the launch as well, check it out here: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Rose Kamal Love
These pointers are very valuable for me as I will be launching a product in October which like yours doesn't have a native audience on PH, it is a modern course creation platform. Thank you!
Judith Amarachi πŸ’™
Congratulations! These will be helpful for future launches.
Jake Harrison
Congrats and thanks for sharing these experience!
Ama Hrubaru
Congratulations! πŸ‘ Will take these into consideration on our launch preparation and we hope for a similar success! πŸ™
Mathis Vella
this post is a must read!
Sofia Gertzen
Very valuable lessons, especially explaing PH to a non PH audience, thank you for sharing! Where on reddit did you share your founders story to encourage people to support your launch?
Julia Chacur
Awesome tips, thanks! And I agree about sharing your mission, people want to hear stories...
Amit Mirgal
Congratulations on your launch, and thank you for sharing. It's valuable information to know. It will definitely add value for the folks who are going to launch soon. πŸ™πŸ½
Nastassia
Ste, thanks for sharing these valuable insights. It will especially help all the newbies like my team and me :)
Pam K.
Great tips here Ste. Will be handy for our launch next week. Thanks!
Ran Aroussi
Thanks for the tips. Definitely gonna follow them for my upcoming launch.
Aaron Kong
Wow man, thanks for sharing your experience with all of us. I’ll definitely be using this for my product launch soon.
Relja Denic
Awesome points! Thanks for sharing
Ruhi
Thanks for sharing such valuable insights.
Thanks for sharing your journey!! And congratulations!!!
AndrΓ© J
Launching soon!
Thanks for the clear vs accurate reminder 😸
Xuying Li
Truly valuable advice! My AI News Podcast's launching soon and it's helpful to me a lot!