Today I celebrate a big milestone. 365 days in a row active on Product Hunt. Honestly, quite a number given how many things happened in my life this year, it feels like I could write a book about it.
But consistency takes effort. Here are 3 things that helped me:
TL;DR: we're building a product to help remote teams make decisions faster and I would love your help on how to recruit beta testers. - Hey, I'm Cl ment and I work full-time at a B2B SaaS co that's been around 5 years and done well. For a number of reasons, we recently decided to pivot. It's exciting and scary. We originally wanted to build the best knowledge base tool in the world. We've hit Product Market Fit, even while competing with big guys Confluence & Notion. We've grown steadily. We have net negative churn. 90% of revenue comes from organic (word-of-mouth, SEO, product-led). A few thousand teams sign up every month. But we want do better. We want to anticipate and solve the problems that our market faces. This brings me to ask for advice. We're developing a unique product for a small, growing, market we love: async-first teams. We bet that while the pandemic forced a lot of companies into remote, we can all learn from the companies that operate with a remote-first mindest. That means fewer meetings, and less time online overall. More time on deep work, and on living your life. The first piece of the puzzle is faster decision-making. So here's where the company's at now:
- We are now 100% focused on creating the best communication tool out there
- We are working with beta partners to improve our new release: Discussions, a tool for making decisions and resolving problems in the flow of work. Our success will massively rely on growing our beta waitlist. We hope this will lead to a big public launch of the new version. We're looking to recruit teams of 10+ employees for our (free) beta, that are ideally software/service companies. Geography doesn't really matter since they should be async-first. These are some initiatives we focus on to grow our waitlist:
- Recruit teams within our existing users
- Invest a lot in content and distribution we believe unique insights about remote will help us establish our position
- Launch awareness campaigns on social (product tours, screenshots, call for beta testers)
- Reach out to a selected list of "top remote companies" to ask for feedback
- Reach out to "remote influencers" to get visibility on podcast, blog posts, etc. ** Do any of you have experience building waitlists? Out of curiosity, is anyone here interested in giving feedback about the product?** Thanks and looking forward to discussing it with you. - Cl ment
Every one of my businesses has one of these somewhere right now, a message I read, decided was not urgent, and then lost inside everything else that felt more urgent in the moment. By the time I remember it, I cannot always tell if it still needs a fast reply or if the moment already passed. Curious how everyone else catches these before they turn into an apology text. Is it a system, a habit, or mostly luck.
I'm looking for a few more habits to add to my routine to help me stay productive. I currently gym and meditate every day to help keep my head clear, and read most days to expand my knowledge. I'm always interested to hear about other routines or habits :D
Getting a job is becoming increasingly difficult many applicants (high competition), automation and the replacement of tasks with artificial intelligence...
Do you remember how it was when you were a Product Hunt newbie? What was the mistakes that you did on your first launch? Let s meet in the comments to share our advices for the people who are going to launch their products for the first time!
Most complaints I get are not new. They are old, quiet, and only turn into a complaint once someone finally runs out of patience. By the time I hear it, the person has usually been annoyed for weeks and just never said anything, or said something small that I did not register as a warning. Curious whether that pattern is just me, or whether the actual complaint almost always arrives later than the moment the person first felt it.
Interested to hear what design tool(s) you're using to make your products, at Product Hunt we use Sketch and I personally love it. But what are you using and what do you love about it? Or do you want to move away into something new?
Almost every founder I know has one line from a customer that's better than anything they'd have written themselves. Usually it's the oddly specific one. The bit you'd never have thought to claim about your own product.
What I find interesting is how those actually arrive, because it's almost never the polite follow-up email asking for a testimonial. Mine turn up by accident. Someone says it in passing at the end of a call, or drops it into a support thread, and if you don't catch it right there it's gone for good.
