After 9+ months of solo designing + developing, I've finally pushed my first SaaS out the door! ⚡️

Thanks Richard!

There are a ton of guides out there on how to launch successfully on Product Hunt, so I won't cover everything, but a few things I focused on this time were:

• Clear, concise, effective copywriting that tells a story. The story either needs to be about you (why you're unique...I highlighted being a solo maker with a failed previous version of this app) or your product in a benefit-driven manner (not what tech it uses, but how it's new, why people should care, etc. like all marketing boils down to)

• High quality, fitting assets, including a nice thumbnail gif. Last time I tried to wing it and created shitty gifs that didn't fit and came out blurry. I spent a solid few days crafting my images in photoshop this time and revising until they looked good and included good copy that I knew would pop and make my post nice to look at and be very shareable on social channels.

• Relentless marketing on launch day across various channels. Counting back the places I posted in: 3 Telegram groups, 2 Slack Channels, 2 Discord Channels, 3 FB groups, Personal Facebook, LinkedIn, TONS of Twitter action, including a personal launch thread that got RTd by Product Hunt and a couple other big names that sent it far: https://twitter.com/balindenberg/status/1054715289236070405. I was RTing, replying, favoriting....all day. Non-stop.

• While there's an element to luck to this, it boils down to my first point: you have to tell a story and make it easy for them to want to RT you, which I designed my thread in mind with. PH needs content, sharing it is a huge part of their existence. I craft a good story with nice emojis and sexy imagery and serve it up to them and then hope for the best. It just so happened to work this time.

• Also important to note that I did not copy and paste the same message to all of these channels, each one was handcrafted and related to my participation in it prior to launch. I'm not a super active community guy and sometimes am frustrated with the advice of "building community" as an entrepreneur before launching products, but I can't deny the effectiveness of it when it comes down to it. It's just a hard, daily grind to do if you don't want to actively participate.

• Had something people can get there hands on immediately and play around. People love this (me included) and definitely helps drive interest, even if it doesn't represent your product as a whole. Mine was more effective because it featured me explaining the product, so you have this narrative of solo maker and now you're interacting with me as I explain the product to you. Simple and compelling.

• The basic meta things: I got a big hunter to post it (not necessary, but still helps) at 12:00 AM on a Tuesday, had a personal + compelling first comment to control the narrative from the start, offered a discount to PHers, etc. These things can't make up for a bad product but can help a good product make it further than it might without them

Finally, it's worth noting that I had a completely failed Product Hunt launch before. It's at 100 votes now but never cracked the front page and completely demoralized me after I spent months and months building it: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/aech

I was way over-indexing on the PH launch / the virality I thought would come from it last time and made myself not overthink it this time. I expected it to flop and, if it did, it would be business as usual the next day. It worked, though, so there's that :)

This was way longer than I intended it to be but if you have specific questions I'm happy to answer them based on my experience ✨

I can only work smart + hard and hope you're right 🙂

Thanks Virgil!

Thanks for your continued support Lynne! Cheers to random Twitter running buddies 😎

Thanks for the thoughts! I agree with you and actually meant to replace it before launching. I was stalling on it forever though and wanted to get it out the door so I just rolled with it.

While it's not the best, I have definitely gotten some warm-hearted reactions to the casualness / personableness of it. People that like it really seem to like it! I will retire it soon though :)

Hey Alex. Going great so far!

Around 70 trials started and lots of inbound interest over live chat, with a couple verbal commitments to becoming a customer if their trial experimentation goes well. I don't have traffic stats but there have consistently been 10 - 30 people on the site all day, a bunch of them going through the demo.

I'm simultaneously exhausted from the last few days of prep but also super energized to get to work tomorrow once things calm down.

Awesome, thanks Alix!

I would honestly love if a few people got to enjoy Aech as a free alternative - it's flown mostly under the radar and deserves a little love before being put to rest soon, haha.

Let me know if you have any questions about Mindstamp or if I can be useful to you for WatchBear 🙏

Thank you Ronan! Means a lot 🙂

Thanks Mangesh, I love to hear that! 😎

:) Trying to not let comments like this get me too excited.

Thanks for the support 🙌

Thanks for the kind words! 🙂