Ryan Hoover
Founder of Product Hunt ☕️💃🎶
Discussion
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Honored to be invited to Product Hunt LIVE. 🙏
A few years ago, I decided to leave a startup to pursue something new. In short, I wanted to (1) build something for myself, (2) learn to become a better product/business person, and (3) challenge myself. I transitioned to a part-time role and started exploring other opportunities in startups. I interviewed at Medium and Monkey Inferno but neither gave me an offer. During that time I took 20 minutes one early morning while sipping a cup of Philz coffee and started a simple email list named Product Hunt. Fast forward nearly two years and we're here. 😊
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Chandra Kalle
@chandrakalle · Maker @orangecaffeine.com
Building a community is hard. You’ve built a very powerful one. But unlike Facebook which runs by itself, a lot of ProductHunt depends on you constantly keeping the community engaged. How do you sustain it? How does PH get into auto-pilot mode? Or is my assumption wrong?
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@chandrakalle agreed, communities are hard to build. 😀
We did a ton of manual things to get PH off the ground. Since then, some efforts have been distributed across the team and community or productized (e.g. we launched Collections to enable anyone to curate and share their own lists of products, games, books, etc.). In reality, the community fuels almost everything. You all post products, upvote, comment, create collections, etc. and while we do some of that too, it’s a small portion of the overall activity. We’re working opening access to more people and creating stronger social connections within the community.
Dan Fennessy
@dan_fennessy · Founder at Party with a Local
@rrhoover @chandrakalle I agree that doing 'things that don't scale' is especially true when trying to build an online community. @rrhoover before you grew to the team and funding PH has today, would you say more importance was given to community over product? Also with your founding team and first hires - were community builders more important to you than people who could code?
Russ Frushtick
@russfrushtick
Are you really 1,000 years old and must feast on the young every Halloween to maintain your appearance?
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@russfrushtick who gave you access to comment? 😉
Zach Kahn
@zkahn94 · Brand Marketing at Vox Media
Hey Ryan, will Product Hunt ever get a buy button?
Nathan Bashaw
@nbashaw · Co-founder and CEO of Hardbound
I haven't been involved building Product Hunt for almost 2 years now. Things have changed a lot! I'm curious - what fact about Product Hunt do you think would most surprise / amuse me?
EDIT: also I realize this question seems completely self-centered, but I bet lots of people here, especially early users, would find random facts about Product Hunt's internal operations fascinating! haha
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Nathan Bashaw
@nbashaw · Co-founder and CEO of Hardbound
@rrhoover holy shit 12 cans a day?! I thought I had a problem at 12 cans a week hahahaha
Lukas Fittl
@lukasfittl · Product Hunt
@nbashaw Still waiting for that day with the news report that La Croix has some evil chemical in it that we didn't know about 💀
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Who do you think is the best dressed man on the Product Hunt team?
Ben Rubin
@benrbn · Co-founder, Life On Air Inc
@eriktorenberg @corleyh is the best dressed PERSON @producthunt 😉
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@eriktorenberg we should probably crowdsource this answer because: community.
Andrew Torba
@torbahax · CEO, Gab.ai #SpeakFreely
@rrhoover @eriktorenberg We all certainly know who has the best flow....
Wilbert Liu
@wilbertliu · I live upon what I believe
Were you starting PH "accidentally"? Or you have prepared in mind that you wanna start a company one day?
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@wilbertliu sort of. 😄 I’ve always wanted to start a company. As a kid I started side projects and pursued money-making ideas (I shared some here). Product Hunt wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t naturally curious.
That said, I don’t think it’s a good idea to “whiteboard your way” into a startup. Founding a company is sexy for some and many do it for the wrong reasons, imho. PH started as an experiment (an email list), graduated to a side project, and only after careful thought months later, did I decide to build a team and raise money. I asked myself several questions before making that decision, most notably: “Do I see myself working on this for a decade.” It’s an important question to ask.
Jonathan Howard
@staringispolite · Growth engineer & founder
How did it feel in the moment when you were navigating unclear choices for your future two years ago? (Interviewing at Medium and Monkey Inferno, blogging, the occasional small talk like the Dojo where we met, and experiments like Product Hunt's chat-group version)
I think there's a "crux" there of sorts that all makers navigate and I'd imagine a lot of ProductHunters are going through that right now. What advice would you give them? (Or the "you" from that time)?
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@staringispolite after 3 years at a previous startup, I started itching for something new. I think everyone faces something similar in their career at some point. I started to think hard about what I wanted to do and settled on these two goals:
1) Learn - I felt stagnant in my current role at the time and had a hunger to grow. These words from my friend @nbashaw, stuck with me: "When you look back at yourself six months from today and don’t feel embarrassed by your naiveté, there’s a problem. That means you’re not learning, growing."
2) Build Something For Myself - Building something you want to use yourself is incredibly motivating and easier* than building products for someone else. PlayHaven was amazing but I started to lose passion for what I was doing day-to-day and my desire to build a consumer product grew.
I wrote more about this topic here.
*But you also have to be cognizant that not everyone is like you. There's a good chance you're the most "hardcore" user of your product if you're building for yourself.
Wilbert Liu
@wilbertliu · I live upon what I believe
Have you ever been in a situation where you don't know what to do for the next step? How did you overcome it?
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@wilbertliu yes. Startups are a guessing game. As confident as you might be, you never really know if it's going to work out but you can de-risk by getting more data, soliciting advice, and eliminating assumptions.
One of the things I need to get better at is asking for help. Fortunately, startup culture is very giving and we're fortunate to have amazing investors, a kickass community, and good friends eager to assist.