The story of Product Hunt – a place of serendipity for killer apps
If your startup owns a ‘verb’ then you are onto something! Just like the words, tweet & pin were owned by a startup once upon a time. Now the word ‘hunt’ is owned by a small startup.
If you are into discovering new apps and products, you will love Product Hunt. I love discovering new products. That is what took me to TechCruch when Arrington first started it. That is what tuned to me Kara & Walt during their gig at AllthingsD. In fact, in my church we’ve interest-based Bible study groups. We call it life group; there is fishing life group, there is tennis life group, there is movie life group, and there is baking life group and so one. The one I lead used to be ‘App Discovery’ life group. Once in a month as a community we used to come together armed with our iPads & gadgets to discuss and discover apps. So my falling in love with Product Hunt is only natural.

As much as discovering new apps is fun, but with thousands of them competing for your scarce attention, it can be quite daunting. When the noise is higher by magnitude than the signal you need a platform like Product Hunt where the community helps in sifting through the noise and make the gems rise to the top as a cream.
What is Product Hunt and how does it work?
Product Hunt is basically a daily leader board of the top ‘hunted’ products.To put it in the most crude way; it is a crowdsourcing platform where Products-meets-Reddit’sAMA-meets-HackerNews-upvote-meets-upworthy-virality. It does allow handpicked group of influences, VCs, entrepreneurs, developers, journos, and other technology enthusiasts to post links of interesting new products – apps, sites, and hardware, along with tagline and ultra-short descriptions.
At present, less than 1% of the audience can submit & comment. But any visitor can upvote the submission they like. Every day the homepage refreshes and a new list is started – the previous day’s list will be emailed to members.
In Product Hunt once a product is hunted (submitted) more often than not the founder (or the app maker) will join the conversation around the product to answer questions, the conversation is usually pretty frank and engaging. Ryan Hoover, the Founder of Product Hunt, said about one of his favorite conversation on the platform “…with Alex from Instanerd: in the thread people made suggestions on how to improve in the morning and later that night he made those updates on the site.”
To put it in the most crude way; it is a crowdsourcing platform where Products-meets-Reddit’sAMA-meets-HackerNews-upvote-meets-upworthy-virality.It does allow handpicked group of influences, VCs, entrepreneurs, developers, journos, and other technology enthusiasts to post links of interesting new products – apps, sites, and hardware, along with tagline and ultra-short descriptions.
At present, less than 1% of the audience can submit & comment. But any visitor can upvote the submission they like. Every day the homepage refreshes and a new list is started – the previous day’s list will be emailed to members.
In Product Hunt once a product is hunted (submitted) more often than not the founder (or the app maker) will join the conversation around the product to answer questions, the conversation is usually pretty frank and engaging. Ryan Hoover, the Founder of Product Hunt, said about one of his favorite conversation on the platform “…with Alex from Instanerd: in the thread people made suggestions on how to improve in the morning and later that night he made those updates on the site.”



