Specify launched in early 2022.
The product got featured on Product Hunt, ranked #2 Product of the Day, hit the Top 10 Products of the Week, and had 2.5K unique visitors on launch day.
This post details the launch plan.
Why Product Hunt
Product Hunt features new products daily. According to similarweb.com, it gets 3.1M unique visitors every month.
As an early-stage company, launching on Product Hunt is an opportunity to raise brand awareness, acquire new signups, and enable early sales motion.
How Product Hunt works
According to hunted.space, Product Hunt has the highest traffic/visibility on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's a 24-hour race that starts at 12:01 AM PST / 09:01 AM CET.
Submitting a new product requires the following inputs:
Name of the product: 40 characters max
Tagline: 60 characters max
Launch tags: up to 3 launch tags — see full list here
Thumbnail: recommended size == 240*240px; maximum size == 2MB
Image gallery: recommended size == 1270*760px; upload 3 to 8 images
Product description: 260 characters max
First comment: starts the discussion
There's a template for that. Here it is.
How Specify launched
When we launched Specify on Product Hunt, we took the following steps:
- Polishing the details
- Finding a Hunter
- Going live
Polishing the details
One mistake when launching on Product Hunt is a confusing tagline.
We considered 2 options:
Distribute your brand from design to codeSync your Figma files with GitHub repos in minutes
We picked the latter, more specific and straightforward.
Similarly, we iterated many times on the visual assets to show the product.
Finding a Hunter
Finding a Hunter isn't a requirement per se. I still think it's a solid option.
According to Product Hunt, using a Hunter isn't a barrier to success:
- 79% of featured posts were by makers who self-hunted
- 60% of #1 Product of the Day winners were self-hunted
When we launched Specify, we collaborated with Hiten Shah. We partnered with Hiten because he has an influence on Product Hunt and beyond. Above all, it was a fantastic feeling for the team, e.g. an extra source of motivation before the launch.
Going live
We went live on Thursday, February 24, 2022, at 12:01 AM PST / 09:01 AM CET and did the following:
- Posted on Twitter/X and LinkedIn
- Sent email campaigns
- Upvoted and replied to every comment on Product Hunt
The objective was to be in the Top 3 within the first hour.
Results
The results in a nutshell:
- 681 points
- 143 comments
#2Product of the Day
#9Product of the Week,#2Developer Tool of the Week
#5Developer Tool of the Month- 72K impressions
- 2.5K DUV
What's next? Launching on Product Hunt definitely is not a one-time opportunity.
Take Stripe. The company launched 68 times on Product Hunt in the last 10 years. Supabase launched 12 times in the last 4 years. Raycast has launched 11 products since 2020.
Product Hunt is about consistency. Keep launching.