Curious how other founders have approached events in the early days. I know for some, hackathons, expos, and pitch competitions are game-changers: early validation, first users, even investors. But for others, they end up being more of a distraction than a getting-early-traction opportunity.
So, I'm curious to know:
Did you include events in your early marketing/growth strategy?
What s the most rewarding event you ve ever participated in with your startup?
The EU s proposed Chat Control Law would scan all private communications for child abuse material, but critics warn it undermines privacy, weakens encryption, risks mass surveillance, and could expand to policing political dissent.
Preparing for our upcoming launch has made me look at the Product Hunt community through a much more deliberate lens than before.
Among some other patterns I've noticed, there seem to be significantly more men among hunters and makers, but def some women among active users and upvoters, and fewer women who code among those who are active than I typically encounter in other tech communities.
Bloomberg reported today that Meta (read: Facebook) is "considering potential budget cuts as high as 30% for the metaverse group next year." That's the same group behind the Quest VR headsets and the online VR game Horizon Worlds. During its annual budgeting sessions, CEO Mark Zuckerberg usually asks execs to identify 10% in cuts, but "the metaverse group was asked to cut deeper this year given that Meta has not seen the level of industry-wide competition over the technology that it once expected."
Now, we're old enough to remember when Zuckerberg went all in on the metaverse in 2021. He, uh, even changed the company's name.
Hey PH! I m Roy, one of the makers of Surf a research copilot for crypto folks. Super excited for our first launch.
I ve read a ton of guides but would love real advice from makers:
1. Expectations / forecasting
Do you usually have a sense of how many participants will show up on launch day or a rough range of upvotes/comments? Any rules of thumb you ve used (e.g., % of Teaser followers who visit, comment to upvote ratios, or targets you set for the first 4 hours)?
We started as a sustainable made-to-order clothing brand. Custom pieces, small batch, everything done internally sourcing, pattern making, grading, cutting, production. The unit economics actually worked because we controlled the whole chain. We even partnered with creators in the thrifting space to get the word out.
But we still couldn't reach enough people. Getting a small brand in front of a large audience without a huge marketing budget is a different kind of impossible. We were bootstrapping and every channel felt like shouting into the void. The product was good. The audience just couldn't find us.
That was the moment realizing we didn't have a product problem, we had a distribution problem. And no amount of improving the clothes was going to fix it.
On launch day, you only get one shot to capture attention. Your landing page is where curiosity turns into clicks and clicks into sign-ups. If it s unclear, slow, or uninspiring, even the best product will slip through the cracks.
A great landing page on Product Hunt should:
Grab attention with a crystal-clear value proposition in the first few seconds.
Show social proof or credibility to build trust fast.
I've noticed that lately, the Kitty Coins on my account have been decreasing. Now, it doesn't really matter to me since I see them more as a vanity metric, but I was curious if the PH team has made any changes that could be causing this daily reduction in Kitty Coins.
Disney just announced a licensing deal with OpenAI that will allow users of OpenAI s Sora to generate short videos of its characters.
Just in case you ve forgotten what s in Disney s IP library, it s way more than Mickey and Goofy. It spans Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and a bunch of other properties. Not everything is included in the deal, though. For example, you ll get the illustrated Tony Stark, not the Robert Downey Jr. version.
