Google Ventures interview
Hoover explains how Product Hunt started, and what its appeal is:
You see it on Twitter and you see it on Hacker News and Reddit and other sites, but you don’t see a platform just for new products every day
Launches iOS app
0 0 reuben reuben2014-10-25 23:19:072014-10-25 23:19:07Launches iOS appCDNify interview
Hoover talks on the podcast about building a community site, creating a minimum viable product (MVP), and new products on the market. On creating Product Hunt:
My motivation is to build something that I’m a consumer of and that I enjoy using.
VentureBeat podcast
0 CommentsHoover joins the podcast from the parking lot outside Y Combinator. On why he started Product Hunt:
People are often asking, What’s on your home screen? or Have you seen that new app? I didn’t know a place online where I could find these things…all in one place
Talks to Valleywag
0 CommentsHoover talks with the Gawker site about why he is joining Y Combinator after siphoning traffic from Hacker News:
There’s no doubt overlap between the communities and the type of content but I don’t see it as competitive
The Social Hour interview
Hoover talks about curating new products, how Facebook wants companies to use its service, Google’s investment of $50 million to inspire female coders, and how Product Hunt is somewhere between Reddit and Hacker News.
It’s not a review site and it’s not a site to find the best thing for [something specific]…people go there to find things they wouldn’t find elsewhere
ProductPeople interview
Hoover tells the podcast about his strategy of building an audience, and then creating something valuable for the community.
We built Product Hunt over four days, during Thanksgiving
Product Hunt Joins Y Combinator
Hoover joins the summer intake. Hoover:
I was actually not intending to apply to Y Combinator. Product Hunt started surfacing during the previous Y Combinator batch because founders told each other to upvote their products. Nicolas [Dessaigne] from Algolia DM’d me and said ‘hey, some of the partners — like Garry Tan — want to meet you.’
Fox News interview
Hoover talks about how venture capitalists use Product Hunt:
VCs have two different hats, the investor hat and the consumer hat, they use the site they like to find new things [and there are] very many cases where VCs have invested in products that I know of that they found on Product Hunt.
That includes SV Angel’s investment in the TapTalk photo app, Steadfast Venture Capital’s investment in the Fitbay fitness social network, and Move Loot, which has got funding from Google Ventures.
I didn’t build Product Hunt for VCs, I didn’t build a product to serve investors, but it is serving them…ultimately I’m building a product for myself and for consumers.
This Week In Startups interview
Hoover and Calacanis talk about new products on Product Hunt like the Uber Wedding app and Soundcloud for iOS, how he got the idea for the site, and how viewers can interact with the people who create the products.
There’s some very interesting conversations that come out of Product Hunt.
He says that for an app called InstaNerd, site users contributed ideas and the founder incorporated them to improve the product.
Numbers grow
Subscribers have risen to 26,000 since the launch, and Hoover receives 300 emails a day from VCs and product people who want to get their projects on the site. Visits to Product Hunt have grown 90% in the last 30 days.
#WaterCooler interview
Hoover talks with Smith and Curaytor.com’s Jimmy Macken about starting Product Hunt, how curation and tracking metrics like clickthroughs can help industries like real estate, and crowd sourcing compared with techniques like SEO. On building relationships online:
You have to provide value…The internet makes relationships much more scaleable
Allvoices interview
Hoover says that living in San Francisco helps, but that meeting people online can be more important for a startup founder:
Many of the relationships I’ve formed didn’t start in person. They began online through my writing, communities like Quibb and Twitter. Face-to-face meetings are the best way to get to know someone but they’re not nearly as scalable as online interactions.
ProducTind
The third-party iOS app designed by Matusumura combines features of Product Hunt and Tinder, and is reported to function as a minimum viable product (MVP) in the interim while Hoover talks to developers about a native app.
Publishes Hooked
0 0 reuben reuben2014-10-27 10:49:132014-10-27 10:49:13Publishes Hooked
Hunting For Habits
0 CommentsHoover expands on the concepts in Hooked in an essay:
Habits don’t form overnight. It takes several days, often weeks for a product or service to earn unprompted user engagement, triggered by people’s day-to-day emotions.
Founds Product Hunt
Hoover launches the first version of the site with Bashaw, a product manager at General Assembly. The initial version is a simple email that takes 30 minutes to put together. They notice open rates and engagement are unusually high at 45% and a 13% click-through rate, respectively. Hoover decides to run and bootstrap the site full-time, while Bashaw stays at General Assembly.
Product management interview
Hoover talks to Jason Shah of Yammer about working in product management:
Getting thrown into the fire is often the best way to learn
Reality Makers interview
Hoover talks about the small but growing Portland tech scene, selling stuff on eBay, how his dad inspired him to become an entrepreneur, and what motivates people to start startups:
It’s ultimately freedom
InstantAction product manager
0 CommentsHoover becomes the company’s product manager.
I didn’t know what a product manager was six months before I became one.