At Product Hunt, we re on a mission to help builders find users and help users find the best new products.

We ve been at it for over a decade, and we ve accumulated a ton of data, but we ve rarely shared it with the outside world. Until now.

This could be related to your industry, or even a side project you're working on.

Here are my 5 (I couldn't function without them):

1. Grammarly proofreading my texts, not just posts, but also client communication

2. ChatGPT / Claude mostly brainstorming, help with copy, and summarising

3. Figma I can put the basic graphics together quickly.

4. Translator sounds incredibly old-school, but English is not my mother tongue

5. Gmail and not only for communication, but also for storing ideas and sending myself email reminders for posts

Because building products has become much more accessible thanks to AI, the bar has had to rise a bit, or at least the expectations have become stricter.

I built my own tool  SafeLimit, but personally, I wouldn t launch it on Product Hunt yet because it s still very basic and doesn t even have a website.

Let me start from the creator s perspective:
I personally don t have a product (apart from hiring people for creative work or offering personal consultations).

But as a creator, I constantly share content, insights, and information, value that helps me build trust (for free). Based on that perceived expertise, people eventually decide to work with me (a paid service).

In the month that I've been here, I've been noticing a pattern in a lot of launches - strong demos, polished UI, clear outputs of "what it does."

But when I ask myself "What problem does this solve?" I sometimes have to dig for the answer. (I come by that thinking honestly - I've spent 33 years building and fixing businesses, so this is the lens I can't turn off.)

1. I've always been on the personal brand side. More and more founders are building it now (sometimes even before the product is ready while it's still in development, before seed fundraising). The CEO builds their position so the product sells more easily at the official launch.

2. But I have experience with people who built the product, scaled it, and only then did we discover who was behind it.

Honestly, with the first approach, I'd be concerned that people invest more in me as a person than in the product. People would idealise the founder and overlook the product's flaws (which could hurt development and constructive feedback).

+ I noticed the most common mistake that many people who started building a personal brand first, connected their product to their personal accounts (emails, social media, etc.) and started having a problem selling these things, because they cannot "give someone keys" to their personal profiles.

With the advent of clawdbots, it's as if we've all lost our inhibitions and "put our lives completely in their hands."

I'm all for delegating work, but not giving them too much personal/sensitive stuff to handle.

When you're a first-time founder/maker, and you're the only person using your own product, you probably overlook important things. That's why you need to test the product with as many people as possible.

The problem is that time is limited. You have to decide not only how many people will test it, but also who those people should be.

I've always struggled with promoting my own work. It always felt a little awkward because I grew up in an environment where drawing attention to yourself wasn't really encouraged.

That's not exactly ideal when you're trying to build a business, and even less so when marketing is literally how you make a living. :D

I ve noticed a pretty big change in my own behavior over the last year.

If I m looking for a tool for something specific, I ll usually ask ChatGPT first, then check Product Hunt or Reddit to see what real people are saying. Google has become more of a second step for me.

What I m curious about is whether thats actually changing discovery for other makers too, or if I m just unusually deep into AI tools.