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.

Interestingly, some products started the day with 50+ points already.
One gained 50 points in two minutes — a perfect hockey stick.
And the mobile app only shows the top 14 products.
Below that, you’re basically invisible.

We also learned that new accounts don’t count for upvotes.
So most of our friends who created accounts to support us didn’t count at all.
Apparently, only older or “trusted” accounts do.

That made us wonder:

• If those new accounts stay active, will they count next time?

• Or are they permanently ignored?

• And how do some products start the day with 50 points already?

There was almost no real user feedback.
Most comments came from other founders asking for upvotes or people selling “launch help.”

It really felt like Product Hunt today is startups launching to other startups.
Not to users. Not for discovery.

Still, the experiment was worth it.
We learned how critical the first four hours are.
We saw how visibility drops off beyond the top 14.
And we realized that Product Hunt now works more like a reputation leaderboard than a launchpad.

That’s not necessarily bad.
It’s just good to understand what game you’re playing.

We’d genuinely love feedback or suggestions from others who’ve launched recently.

• Are there still real users on Product Hunt?

• Has it simply evolved into a founder-to-founder ecosystem?

• And if so, what replaces it as a real discovery platform going into 2026?