The Product Hunt Effect - A book about the impact of community-driven startups

@mightyalex I really loved seeing that type of comment consistently. It's a really powerful testament to Product Hunt in that people aren't only coming here to discover products or just to share what they would have already been working on. Product Hunt itself is inspiring people to create things solely because of the idea that people will see their work. That's inspiring and I think it illustrates that Product Hunt is more than even a startup or a community... it's a real movement.

@sujanpatel That depends on the criteria. StartupStash did exceptionally well. Meerkat debuted on Product Hunt and already has over 2 million users (not sure how many of those are active). Ship Your Enemies Glitter did $60,000 in revenue over the first 24 hours.

@sujanpatel @erictwillis Eric, Amongst the most successful launches, would you happen to know whether they were mostly "planned" or "randomly hunted"?

@sujanpatel @_mridul_ A vast majority of the most successful hunts were planned.

@yevp Yeah. It's difficult to keep up with everything. We are working on some things to make it easier to keep up to date on things in Maker Hunt. Hopefully, that will help. Thanks for all the support and also for letting @SavIsSavvy know about the community. Her AMA was so awesome!!

@gozdeaksay I think the best example we have it the one set by the Product Hunt team. They are constantly thinking of new ways to engage and "delight" the community. @rrhoover practically lives in twitter and is constantly engaging with users seemingly every minute he's awake. A community often takes on the behavior of its leaders and Ryan engages in a positive manner and obviously loves products. The community feeds on that and even though the company has grown dramatically, it remains intimate because the founder is still extremely involved in welcoming members to the community and also engaging the rest of us. @eriktorenberg has also done an excellent job with extending that engagement offsite. I first met Erik as a Product Hunt meetup and that can't be overlooked as a driver that connects people with the brand. It makes it feel "real" and he's lead some of those meetups all over the world. Some of those meetups, like the latest one in Berlin, had over 2,000 participate. That's massive. Erik also very actively engages the community on the site, on twitter, in multiple slack community, etc. Then the different podcasts like Product Hunt Radio and Maker Stories provide more ways to interact with the brand...it takes you deeper into the community and also provides enough variety that it keeps the brand fresh. So you need to be constantly engaging with your community and also keeping that relationship interesting and "fresh".

@davidspinks @eriktorenberg I think I've learned the value building relationships while living abroad for over a decade as it forced me to constantly build new relationships and find ways to provide value to others. Also, I've grown to really enjoy helping others as I began to reflect back on my own life and realizing how I could have avoided mistakes had I had more support. So my earliest stories with community go way back to the late 90s actually where I used to hang out with other online marketers to learn new SEO tactics. This was back before Google and the big dog was Alta Vista. Back then, it was rather easy to get a high position on search engines as the ranking algorithms were relatively unsophisticated, but we used to come together and consistently share new tactics to do business online. I wasn't launching startups at this point where it was all about "growth". I was running profitable businesses though and we were a community of marketers/bootstrappers. I don't know if I'm a great community builder. I do know that I really "care" and I'll do the dirty work that's required to get the job done. And often it's just that: Knowing exactly what to do (being effective) and then how to do it (being efficient). So I think I'm constantly getting better at figuring out what needs to be done. I'm a life-long learner so I hope I'll look back at this period one day and realize that I was indeed still an amateur.

@tbajwa Hello Taimoor. Slack is like a modern version of IRC. In this case, I don't think it's the interface that's new as much as the way it's been applied to work communications (and then communities have just adopted it for their own use cases). I do think we're seeing interfaces that allow us to communicate in a more personal manner. The real-time aspects of slack really allow you to get closer to people that you wouldn't normally communicate with on that level. I think you're seeing the same thing with apps like Meerkat and Blab. They're very personal and intimate. I don't think we'll see a revolution as much as a gradual evolution of more personal applications like slack, live streaming apps like Meerkat, , Periscope, Blab, and different functionality in Snapchat like stories.. a lot of that is being driven by smartphone adoption and also people becoming more comfortable with sharing their personal lives after years of being exposed to ephemeral apps. Live streaming, for instance, is becoming "normal". To the second question: I think caring about other's success has helped me become a better learning. In order to truly help someone, you need to understand where you can add value. This means you need to both understand them well and the problems they are facing. So you really need to be patient, empathetic, and inquisitive. That requires being a good listener. I've always been a good listener, but now I really focus in so that I can figure out the best way to help. I do feel a lot of satisfaction when someone truly feels like I've helped them in some way.

@everette Thanks for backing the project, Everette!

@karthik2502 Thanks for the support, Karthik.

@sorinpantis Thanks Sorin.

@misbahspeaks Thanks Misbah! And thanks for helping so much at Maker Hunt.

@erictwillis Keep building :)