Does launching on Product Hunt even matter if you don't have an audience?
I’ve been watching a lot of recent launches, and honestly, the gap between solo indie hackers and backed startups with massive mailing lists is getting crazy.
When you launch with zero audience, even if your product solves a real problem, it feels like shouting into a void unless you constantly poke people in DMs to take a look. On the flip side, teams with existing distribution easily dominate the top spots within the first few hours.
For those of you who launched completely from scratch with no pre-existing email list or social following:
What actually worked for you to get those first 20 or 30 genuine conversations going? Did you focus heavily on Reddit, cold outreach, or just engaging here in the community weeks before launch day?
I’d love to hear some real experiences from people who built their traction from zero.
Replies
Mossy
Launched nine days ago with no audience. No list, no following. I tried Hacker News and got flagged because I posted from a brand account, so that was over fast. Ninth of the day here, about 40 people use it now.
The launch itself didn't bring me any conversations. It brought a lot of traffic for one day and it was gone by day four.
What worked was this forum. I posted about an update in my own product forum on Saturday and got 13 comments from real users. The conversations came one person at a time, after the launch, not during.
The best thing I got was an email from a user with four things he wanted fixed. He also didn't know one of the features existed. A vote would never have told me that.
Everyone says to message 15 people before you post. I didn't have 15 people to message. That's the actual problem when you start from zero, and I haven't solved it :/
Good luck, It's not very easy :/