General
p/general
Share and discuss tech, products, business, startups, or product recommendations
AmazingSylvia
I failed my first Product Hunt launch. Here's what I learned from this experience.
Featured
134
In September 2023, I had my first launching experience in ProductHunt. It is an AI video editing tool.To avoid advertising, I won't say the name. I would like to share why it is fail even it met the goal we were looking for at that time. Why I even changed my job considering this experience, and some insights about launching Product Hunt. I hope this article can help you if you are the first time hunter to let you know what’s the right thing to do! Why I launched? To won early users to give us feedback, and help us to help us work together by giving some feedback to make our products better. About the result? I won over 250 users to sign up and use our product by myself. To clarify, I won them by launching our product and promote our ProduntHunt launch page and engaging with the community all by myself. How I failed? I launched on September with 52 followers, I forgot about the position. There are five of us on the project team. I am the only one who engage with the community, do marketing at social media, in another words who cares about these launch. What is the situation? I worked at an editing software company that does global business for 10 years, AIGC related product is their new project teams. Our project team is led by VP. They used to have a global business but did better in developing markets such as Asia, Africa and Latin America.However, because of the arithmetic cost of AI products and the cost of models is relatively high, so we choose to do the European and American markets. I studied in England for two years. And I have 3 years of experience in overseas projects and 2 years of entrepreneurial experience in the UK. In other words, I know the European and American markets better than he does. But when I told him to look at ProductHunt launch to make his own account on it to interact with the community before launch he just listened and didn't move. After launch, I am the one who contacts angel users to help give us some feedback one by one. After all, he's the VP and he was in charge of other products before making ours, so I asked him to contact previous users to try it out and give us feedbacks on ProductHunt.He promised and he didn't deliver the message. Actually the company I worked for is not small, it have like over 300 employees. However, they are get used to the old way they earn money by running Google ads make users purchase of membership. They have a path dependency on the original way of commercialization. So they did not think highly of ProductHunt when they doing the brand new AI project. My insights: 1.ProductHunt launch is a teamwork thing. But in my last team it looks like I am the only one who cares. 2.Making sure that all the makers in your team are sign up and engage as much as they can with the community. That is the key. 3.Connect early users to give feedback. Start running social media early, contact former users to give comments, cuz one comment equals 3 upvotes! 4.Choosing a specific launch day, I saw other hunter wrote in their insights that you can seen the You can look at the total number of products in the AI category for the day to determine the competition and then determine whether to LAUNCH! That is what I learned from my first launch experience. Hope it can help you during your first launch!
Replies
Best
Tornike Tsiramua
Thanks for sharing this story. The team is crucial to success. Don't give up, push it! We are here to support!
AmazingSylvia
I am about to launch the product of my new team in December. It will be great to connect, my LinkedIn is https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiex...
@sylvia_sheng we connected already on LinkedIn, Sylvia. Do keep us updated when you post your pre-launch page :)
Thanks for the transparency. The authenticity and being very humble about it. You sharing this helps many people really think and plan their launch!
Momcilo Stojkovic
thanks for sharing those learnings, always interesting to see others have faced the same challenges, but also to discover some traps that might occur in the future
Daryna Berezhna
Thanks for sharing! Actually, our first launch also a bit failed, as we've launched a cold emailing course, and it was removed from the competition (cause you can't launch courses on PH). We've learned from it, and now are getting ready to launch our email deliverability solution at the end of November. To be honest, I'm a bit nervous, but we'll see how it goes. 😌
Tapan Patel
Hey Sylvia, I read the post entirely, and I can relate to it. Something similar happened to me on a product that we launched earlier last year. With this learning, I am working with the team to launch my new product in the first week of Decemeber. I would love to stay connected on LinkedIn.
AmazingSylvia
@riyoai Feel free to connect on LinkedIn!Good luck to your future launch. I hope my writing skills haven't deteriorated;)
Lakshya Singh
This is really amazing! Thanks for sharing. We are already having our whole team getting engaged on Product Hunt however, the last point was greatly insightful!
qiufeng
Thank you very much, Sylvia, for sharing your valuable experience. My first launch on Product Hunt also failed. I think I didn't fully grasp the platform's launch rules. I released my product on Product Hunt only at noon and didn't establish a strong connection with the community. I have summarized my experience as follows: 1. Determine a good time to launch 2. Be active in the producthunt community with your team, I've been active for 18 days now. 3. Join producthunt discussion groups, such as linkedin and discord.
Hariz Maloy
Thanks for being so honest and open about your experience Sylvia. There's no failures, just opportunities to learn and I'm sure your next launch in December would show all those lessons learnt come to play and I bet you'll have a great launch then.
Khul Anwar
Sylvia, i related very much with your story. Even my launch worse. I got only 51 user signup free trial. i tried to contact trial user to get feedback via email and they ignored it. What best suggestion for next launch to engage and contact the user to get feedback ?
Aswath Subramanian
Thanks for the elaborate description! Some great insights! And I feel that you have learnt alot in the process which is the ultimate win!
zuhaib ashfaq
It is vital to have like-minded people on your team. Thanks @sylvia_sheng for your insights. Points noted!
Raju Singh
Some real value in these insights Sylvia. A product launch has to be about teamwork if you love your product and care for it. Be it any platform, its the users, community and followers who will be your first givers in any form that you want and the entire team has to be in it to win it. Thanks for sharing your story. It really means a lot to come out and share this in open to help others.
Ruuusch
Thank you for share your story. Just feel the kinda the same today but I would not say I failed. I just learned a lot! :)
Ashleigh McCabe
Thanks for these insights Sylvia, they are very useful. We are launching next week for the first time so fingers crossed it goes well for us!
Novie Dizon
I am so amazed Sylvia. Thank you so much for this! I've read it from start to finish!
AmazingSylvia
@novie_dizon lol!Thanks for the praise of my post!I feel so glad if it can really help others.Feel free to connect in LinkedIn!
Shahmir Faisal
I also launched my first product in October. I completely failed and only got 26 upvotes. I was not disappointed since it was something I built a year ago and completely left it. When I heard about product hunt, I thought of launching it as an experiment and seeing what actually happens and how the platform works. Overall it was a nice experience and it taught me a lot of things which will help me in launching my upcoming products.
Khagani Bayramov
Hi Sylvia. I feel sorry for you that you has such experience. But, I think bad experiences in the past pave a robust way for successful initiatives. What I concluded from your story is that, your workmates didn't take serious the launch, believe in the teamwork. Where there is no synergy among team members, projects generally fail or do not yield as expected.
Sydney Chan
Love your tips, Sylvia! Let's connect as I love your enthusiasm and optimism. Failure is never easy, but what we learn from is it so valuable. That's how you grow. We will be launching soon here at Swit. https://www.producthunt.com/prod... We would love your support.
Carol Moh
Thanks for the insights @sylvia_sheng having the team engaged makes a huge difference from what I have seen! We are gearing up to launch early next year, so this was a really helpful read! Good luck with December's launch - hope it is a successful one!
AmazingSylvia
@carolmoh Hey Carol, thank you for your kindness. May I ask if you used AI chatbot before? lol If so may I invite you to try out our new product.
Carol Moh
@sylvia_sheng happy to try out your product! Do you have a link I can use?
AmazingSylvia
@carolmoh Yes,here is the link, feel free to talk to me if you need anything or any feedbacks. I'd appreciate it.https://www.haijoy.com/