How Product Hunt put Siftery on the map

Product Hunt logo by ProductHunt.com, Cover by Siftery.com

TL;DR = Product Hunt gave Siftery an awesome launch boost, including over 10,000 user signups in the two weeks that followed. Here’s our PH story and some of the preparation we think helped us do well.

Development on Siftery itself started in mid-2015, with the first user account registered on July 30th. For the remainder of 2015, the app remained in a closed beta, with a growing network of friends and early users which remained only a few hundred large.

During the first week of the new year, the team decided that Wednesday January 20th would be our launch date. The app was good enough for public consumption (if barely), with the basic functionality in place. We were also in the final stages of closing our seed round and pitching a press launch, and felt that getting Product Hunt in would create the right momentum.

On January 19th, as launch week approached, there were 1,290 users on Siftery. We already knew Product Hunt was a great channel to attract early adopters — and estimated it could net us a few hundred new user signups, and maybe even pass the 2,000 user mark.

Instead, this happened:

Product Hunt helped catalyze a 2 week launch period during which we received over 50,000 visitors and gained over 10,000 user sign-ups — a majority of them with their business e-mails. At least 6,000 can be attributed to Product Hunt directly.

Over the same period users added tens of thousands of products to their company profiles, made thousands of product recommendations, and we found many of our most active users.

How did we do it?

Even in our most optimistic scenarios, we weren’t expecting such interest and outpour of support. Part of it is “luck”, and the fact that the problems we’re trying to solve are relevant for many Product Hunt users.

However, there were a few things we did to prepare and maximize our chance to do well. Most of what a team can influence is in the preparation stage; launch day itself is mostly about the plan playing out and hoping for the best.

Here’s what we think worked for us:

1. Be deliberate about a launch date. We selected a day during the middle of the week when we thought the product would be in a stable state and everyone on the team could focus on the launch. More importantly, we wanted our launch to fit in well with our other objectives, such as closing our seed funding.
2. Find a PH ‘super user’ to ‘hunt’ you. We reached out to Kevin William David weeks in advance. Kevin is the most active Product Hunter ever and has ‘hunted’ over 1,000 products. It helped that we had a connection through the 500 Startups network, and that Kevin is especially interested in B2B companies. Since all of Kevin’s users get alerted when he hunts a product, having him — or anyone else with a good reputation and follower count on PH — is a critical part of doing well on Product Hunt. This active group of the most active users act as unofficial “gatekeepers”.
3. Prepare captions, descriptions, images, and any other assets. Ahead of launch we prepared what we wanted every field to say and came up with attractive designs for our screenshots — including an animated GIF showcasing the app’s functionality. We did multiple iterations of captions and descriptions, got lots of feedback then picked the ones that resonated best. Finally, we prepared a Medium post which expanded on the company’s story and mission — and was posted early in the day as the first comment.
4. Make a list and share the launch with your network. Ahead of the launch, we created a spreadsheet that included all the places where we would share Siftery’s launch. The spreadsheet included the message that would be posted, who on the team would be responsible, and even the estimated time when we would post. One way to think about a community like Product Hunt is that it’s a multiplier on your community — for each person (and especially upvoter) you get to your product, you get a multiple back in terms of increased visibility.
5. Send personalized messages. We found that personal messages work substantially better than posts in groups or e-mail lists. This is probably due to diffusion of responsibility. It may take longer to send personal messages, but it’s worth it. You can also think of it as an opportunity to reconnect with others.
6. Aim for the top early. Similar to search engine results pages, the attention on Product Hunt goes disproportionately to those at the top at any given time. Users are more likely to explore the top products, and are also more likely to upvote it, increasing its visibility even more. Siftery was lucky to get to #1 early in the day and stayed there. While not all products can make it to the top, focusing any outreach early in the day gives you the best bang for your effort. early (midnight — 3 A.M. PST) — it’s always 7 A.M. somewhere after all.
7. Keep up the momentum. Hopefully, you have enough things on your list to keep you busy. Most likely, as feedback and user questions come in, you might not be able to reach out to everyone that you wanted to.
8. Go all in and be responsive. Along with all the sudden attention, if your launch is set up well you’re likely going to be getting a lot of feedback and questions. People will start talking about you. It won’t just be on Product Hunt. Your e-mail and Twitter might be swamped; someone might decide to cross-post you on Reddit or Hacker News.
   Being on top of the conversation and responding will likely require 100% attention of several team members — plan accordingly. At Siftery, we were on the hot seat for 24 hours straight, fielding questions from all around the world.

One more thing… here are some of the tools that made our life easier that day:

• Mention helped us keep track of and respond to activity on Twitter and across the web
• Buffer for scheduling multiple posts across social networks and ahead of time; it’s a huge productivity booster through reducing context switching costs
• YAMM (Yet Another Mail Merge) — A lean and powerful mail merge tool that integrates with Google Apps. This is our ‘Buffer’ for e-mail — allowing us to schedule personalized messages. We think an ideal mail merge shouldn’t just personalize a few parameters — YAMM makes it easy enough that you can personalize full sentences.
• Inspectlet lets you see recorded user sessions, reducing our response time to any usability issues
• Medium allowed us to tell our story and the amplification we got from our launch post there also helped our Product Hunt launch itself.

Have fun! If you prepared well hopefully you too will have a good launch experience. It’s quite a rush to go from months of relative quiet to having hundreds of visitors at the same time. While not all of those users will stick around, hopefully the right ones will and they’ll help you as you set out to build the next big thing.