Hey Product Hunt! I'm launching today, and I've been collecting the questions business owners say they wish they could just ask their own business and get a straight answer.
One of the biggest questions every early-stage founder faces today is: How do I launch my startup in this new era of AI-driven product development? It s so easy to build quickly now. Do I build first or validate first?
Personally, I ve seen hundreds of startups born in the past year. I m a grad student at MIT, and I created an AI accelerator for MIT and Harvard, so a lot of those startups have had amazing founding teams. I want to share some of the best practices I m seeing for getting products into market in an era where a lot of the old best practices seem to be shifting.
New here, first post. I've been browsing for months without an account.
I've got a decent pile of free tools I use regularly and a couple I pay for. What I can never figure out is the line between "this is fine free" and "okay I'll actually pay." Sometimes the free version does 90% of what I need and I still upgrade for the last 10%. Other times I'll tolerate an annoying limitation for years rather than pay five bucks.
I don't think my logic is consistent at all. Curious how other people decide. Is there a moment where it clicks, or is it just vibes?
Been browsing Product Hunt for a while without an account and finally made one.
Something I've noticed about my own reactions. When a launch page is really slick, a nice demo video, a beautiful site, testimonials already in place, I get a little suspicious. I know that's unfair, plenty of good products have good design. But my experience has been that the polish on launch day doesn't tell me anything about whether the thing works when I actually use it.
Some of the roughest-looking listings I've clicked on turned out to be the most solid tools. And some of the prettiest ones fell apart the moment I tried anything outside the demo flow.
Curious if anyone else has this bias. Has a really polished launch ever turned out to be exactly as good as it looked? Or is there a tell you've learned to spot?
I'm 6 months into building my first product (still pre-PMF, ~20 active users), and user feedback has been the hardest thing to crack. Here's what I've tried so far and what I learned from each:
I have seen multiple launches here (on PH) providing AI solutions to the student exam preparations (and its really helpful). Students can now find fast and simple solutions to their problems or study plans as AI helps them fast and easily. They can now study anytime, anywhere, with no need for anyone's time (24/7 available).
But everyone has its own +ve & -ve thoughts in an easy way (suggestions/improvements) so what are your thoughts about it?
Notion: we used it for everything, which meant it was organized for no one. Docs lived in 4 different structures depending on who created them. We moved back to Google Docs for anything collaborative.
Slack: we kept it but killed 80% of the channels. The "tools" channel, the "inspiration" channel, the "random" channel. Nobody used them except to post things that didn't need a response. Now there are 6 channels. It's quieter and somehow we're more on top of things.
