Joshua Gibson

Hi all! A few days ago, I wrote about my experience as a first-time founder and a brand new member of Product Hunt. One thing that really stood out was how kind, welcoming, and supportive everyone has been. That got me thinking about something else. As a small founder without a large network, visibility feels like one of the biggest challenges. The community has been great, but I wonder how many great products never get discovered simply because the founder is starting from scratch. I'm curious what others think: If you launched with a small network, what helped you gain traction? How do you discover products outside of the daily leaderboard? Would dedicated spaces for first-time founders or smaller launches be useful? What could Product Hunt do to help more hidden gems get seen? I'd genuinely love to hear different perspectives. One of the things I've already come to appreciate about Product Hunt is the people, and I'd be interested to hear ideas on how we can help more small founders find their audience.

Hi all! A little over two months ago, the app I just launched didn't exist. It actually came to me as I was trying to find something that would help me on my newly-revived fitness journey. I have a full-time job. I have two toddlers. Most of the work happened early in the morning before work or after the kids went to bed. Like a lot of people recently, I started experimenting with AI-assisted development. What amazed me wasn't that I could make small features faster. What amazed me was seeing something that existed only in my head start to become a real product almost exactly how I imagined it. There were plenty of bugs, revisions, and moments where I had to rethink things completely. But in less than two months, I went from an idea to a working app in the App Store. The app is called DoPoint. The simplest way to describe it is a weather forecast for cravings. Most health and fitness apps focus on what already happened. How many calories you ate. How much exercise you did. How much weight you lost. I became interested in a different question: Why do I stress-eat? What if cravings aren't random? Is there a pattern? The app starts by using onboarding information and simple rules to identify likely craving windows. As people continue logging things like mood, hunger, food, and exercise, the forecast gradually becomes more personalized using a scoring model built from their own behavior patterns. The app will then send notifications ahead of danger windows so the user is more aware that they are prone to stress-eating or grazing through that time window. The goal isn't to predict the future perfectly. The goal is to help people recognize patterns and build awareness before they're standing in front of the pantry wondering why they suddenly want a snack. Awareness brings progress, which brings success. I found something I believed was genuinely different, a gap in an otherwise overcrowded and competitive industry. The harder challenge has been figuring out how to explain that idea in a way that instantly clicks with the people who might benefit from it. Building something and helping people understand why it matters are two very different skills. The other thing I've noticed is how welcoming and supportive the Product Hunt community has been. I have not interacted with many, but seeing the interactions between others has been refreshing. I'm still very early in this journey, but I'm grateful to be here, and I hope I can eventually contribute to the community and hope others can pour into me as well. For those of you who have launched products before, what surprised you most about the process? What lesson did you learn that nobody warned you about?