Product Hunt, like many popular products, didn’t start with grand dreams.
Ryan Hoover started it as a simple email list and as a side project. He didn’t intend it to become a business.
Product Hunt is like Reddit but just for products. Every day, its users, mostly Founders, and Geeks curate a list of the top products and startups that people haven’t heard of.
Fellow community members then upvote, downvote, and chat about them. Several VC’s visit this site to find ideas they should invest in.
It grew and grew with millions of users and finally was sold for more than $15 million.
What you could learn from this episode:
- What he did before starting Product Hunt
- Why he started with an email list
- How fast they built the website
- Why he didn’t release it immediately to the public
- How he acquired his first 2000 users
- How he got the cat mascot for his website
