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Ivan Semenov

2mo ago

Has Product Hunt become startups talking to themselves?

We launched Visibility by Causo last week to learn how Product Hunt actually works.
What we found was interesting and worth sharing.

Our results:

  • 21st place

  • 24 points

  • 53 followers

  • 13 comments

  • 13 waitlist sign-ups

  • ~60 real product uses

  • 360+ total launches that day

Not terrible, but it didn t feel like traction.

Learnings from our launch - is PH now more about a reputation leaderboard than real feedback?

Here s what we learned from launching our AI visibility checker on Product Hunt (it audits how well ChatGPT, Claude, and other LLMs understand your business).

  • Ranked #21

  • Gained 53 followers, 40 people upvoted

  • Decent waitlist signups for our upcoming full product (https://causo.ai/)

  • The real lesson: it s about who you can rally, not what you built.

New accounts don t count. You need people with active, aged accounts. We had about 40 people upvote, but only verified accounts mattered for ranking. Our friends and supporters who previously didn't have a PH account but legitimately wanted to support us didn't count.

Only top 14 products get real visibility. The mobile app literally only shows the top 14. Everyone else is invisible to most users. Organic discovery below that is basically nonexistent.

Ivan Semenov

2mo ago

AI Visibility Checker by Causo - Find out how to improve your AI Visibility

Visibility by Causo measures how AI systems understand your company. It runs structured scans through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity to show what each model knows about your startup, where gaps exist, and how to fix them.