My team and I are launching our RFP library tool on Tuesday, but we are doing something entirely unscalable for our beta: we aren't handing our users a login.

We know that AI hallucinates badly on unstructured legacy proposals. So, rather than throwing an AI tool at unorganized files, we are stepping in as a temporary extension of the users' team. We do the heavy lifting of manually organizing their scattered past proposal data into an accurate, verifiable library. We want to ensure that the foundation is flawless before we automate any sort of self-serve onboarding.

Has anyone else launched a high-touch, concierge MVP like this? Did your early users value the hands-on setup, or did the lack of instant access cause too much friction?

I launched my SaaS company, Encharge, in 2019 with less than $1,000 in my account, no funding, no network, no audience, and no accelerators. It generated $2 million before we sold it. Here are 17 things I learned from it.

1. Startups are a last-man-standing game.

The one to win is not the fastest, smartest, or best. It's the most persistent and resilient.

Hey everyone! I m Head of Ops at Product Hunt, and I frequently get asked about the best Payroll, PEO, EOR, and HRIS solutions for distributed teams.

I m active in multiple ops communities (LinkedIn, Slack, Circle), and discussions on this topic come up repeatedly but

• Yesterday, I saw this report: Meta employees consumed 73.7 trillion AI tokens in a single month. This costs roughly $221 million a month and around $2.65 billion a year. That s the salary of about 9,000 engineers.

• In addition, the consumption of tokens (energy and electricity related to it) also has its limits.

• Many people are starting to boycott AI. Today I read in a private message from a company profile: "Was about to sign up and noticed you use AI images, so decided not to"

I don t doubt that AI makes our lives easier and creates opportunities in many ways.

But don t you notice the fact that at a certain point it becomes unsustainable and disadvantageous?...

Ran the same comment through four threads over a month and only one kept generating views weeks later. The difference was not the reply count in the first hour, all four got at least one. It was whether a third person with no connection to me or the OP joined within the first two or three days without being asked.

If it stays just me and the OP going back and forth, that is engagement, not compounding. The one thread that kept going had someone unconnected join inside 48 hours, and that window is also roughly when the other three had already gone flat.

Curious if anyone else tracks this specifically, or if there is an earlier signal worth watching for before the third person even shows up.

I have launched on PH twice but before launching, I always prefer to share the product with at least 20 potential users over DM. The goal is to get early feedback and testimonials. This helps me understand what s working (or not) in the copy, design, offer, value proposition, etc.
Based on those early insights, I iterate quickly and it could be small tweaks or full rewrites, depending on what people are saying.

To make it easy for them to say yes and share feedback, I create a no-brainer offer (like 70 90% discount) and DM potential users on X asking for feedback.
What s your pre launch strategy for collecting feedback and improving your product before launching on PH?
P.S. Here s a sample DM I use to get early feedback for Boringlaunch:
Hey [User Name]

We ve just launched (product name) for [Industry/Category/Domain/Target Audience]

It might be a great fit for your [product name].

We just can t get enough

Your launches are pure gold. So are you. That s why we re introducing Maker Minutes. We re doing our best to shine on a light on the talented and interesting makers that make up the Product Hunt community. One small way you can participate is sharing self-recorded videos of yourself answering some casual questions about yourself that we will selectively share on our socials so the broader community can get to know you and what you re working on better.

Community Hours got a permanent residence

We ve been loving our Community Hours sessions where we get to meet some fresh faces and consult with makers about their upcoming launches, so we decided to give the sign up links a permanent home. No more scratching your head to remember where you stored that link that s floating around on various parts of the internet. Find the sign up link on our Launch Guide or in the launch submission flow. If you haven t joined us yet, please do!