When is the right time to launch on Product Hunt?
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For founders who have launched on Product Hunt before:
How did you decide that your product was actually ready to launch?
I’m particularly curious about the point where you stopped thinking, “we need a few more things before launching,” and decided to just go for it.
Did you wait for:
a certain number of users?
consistent usage?
testimonials?
a polished onboarding experience?
a few important integrations?
or did you launch much earlier and use Product Hunt itself to get feedback?
I’m working on a developer-focused product myself and trying to avoid making the mistake of either launching too early or waiting forever.
Would love to hear what you wish you had known before your first Product Hunt launch.
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I'm kind of in the same spot. My product's done, and our own clients have been using it for a few months now. I put out a press release in September and some traffic's starting to come in from that, and I've applied to AppSumo too. With PH I'm still waiting for the right moment, because I've heard you only get one launch.
@hisashispace Yeah, that's pretty much the dilemma I'm trying to understand, too.
The “you only get one launch” part is what makes me hesitant. It makes sense to want the product, positioning, onboarding, and initial audience in a good place before you launch.
Out of curiosity, what are you waiting to see before you feel the timing is right? More organic traffic, a certain number of active users, a stronger community around the product, or just feeling that the product itself is mature enough?
@kushagra_agrawal8 My original thinking was that your launch is when you get the most attention, and where you land in the rankings that day decides whether you get even more. So I figured it was better to contribute to this community and build real relationships here as much as I could before launching.
But @adana, the first person I connected with here, told me she launched about two months after joining PH.
I'm digging into it right now, and who hunts you seems to matter a lot. When a product launches it gets featured on the PH homepage, and it looks like the maker's and the hunter's followers get notified, so how much exposure you get there seems to be the key.
I'll keep looking into it and share back if I find anything useful!
@hisashispace That makes a lot of sense. I think the part about building relationships before launching is probably more important than I initially realised.
The hunter/follower angle is especially interesting. I hadn't really thought about the existing audience around the hunter being such a significant part of the initial exposure.
I'm also curious how much of the launch-day performance comes from having that audience ready beforehand versus the product itself getting picked up organically by the PH community.
Please do share what you find. I'm going to dig into this more too, especially around what actually drives homepage visibility and launch-day exposure.
@kushagra_agrawal8 Here's what I found so far. I looked at a few launches in project management from the last couple of months. The one hunted by a top hunter with about 5,500 followers finished 6th of the day with around 200 upvotes and 41 comments, even though the makers had very few followers of their own. The self-hunted ones in the same category landed between 12th and 45th, with only one or two comments each. That hunter's launches average about 230 upvotes, so that result was right around his normal.
Two other things surprised me. PH's own help says you can relaunch the same product after six months if there's a significant update, like a new mobile app, so it isn't strictly one launch per product. And Kitty Points don't affect launch rankings at all, according to the help center.
So for me the takeaway is still to build real relationships here before launch day, and that includes hunters.
Yeah I think a stranger understanding it and finishing one useful thing matters more than extra polish. I waited too long for polish once, then feedback showed onboarding had more holes than the features. What would you want to see from first users?
@matheus_paranhos1 That's a really good point. It's easy to keep polishing features while overlooking whether someone new can actually get value from the product without help.
For AgentCost, I'd want to see whether a developer can connect an agent, understand what's happening across its traces and execution, and identify something useful about its cost, reliability, or behaviour without needing me to walk them through it.
I'd also pay attention to where they get stuck, what they expect to see but can't find, and whether the insights actually change how they debug or improve their agents.
I'm curious: when you discovered those onboarding gaps, was it mainly through watching users try the product for the first time, or through the feedback they shared afterwards?