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How We Got Featured Top 10 on Product Hunt: Real Progress & Luck

Oooh, my goodness. Yesterday, Gumdrop was featured top 10 on Product Hunt homepage. (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/gumdrop) My team didn't even know that was happening until I clicked our PH link. Surprise! None of us expected that. Today let me talk a bit about what we did to be featured.

We didn't do anything that was being traditionally recommended in the startup community. In fact, I didn't even know we had a PH page until last week. When I heard about it I didn't care about it at all. The last time I messed around with PH was for Pubb.at, my previous startup. I read all these articles and blogs on "how to successfully launch on PH", and did it all. You can still see that crap on my PH account. 10 upvotes, it didn't work!

But here is what we did:

  • The day before we got featured at about 8 pm, my co-founder pressed launch bottom. (please ignore the time, we just randomly pressed it)
  • Then we chilled out
  • The next day I was going to upvote it myself, then I saw the upvote counts were going nuts
  • Then we realized we were being featured on PH homepage

Yeah, that's it. We did it.
But Gumdrop has two things that Pubb.at didn't have:

  • Nice pictures
  • A bit of luck

I can't tell you for sure if the pictures were the key to getting featured, but I think it made you look more legit.

At this point, I can only say: Focus more on the product, focus less on how to get short cuts. It took me a lot of times when I tried to do those "how to successfully launch on PH" tips. And for most of the product even if you did get featured, it won't help you that much. We are getting a lot of users, but most of the users did not come from our PH launch. We got most of our users by doing humble works. We talked to girls on all the dating platforms, we passed out flyers, we talked to the college clubs, etc.

When real progress meets luck, good things happen.

  1. 1

    Very nicely done, good job!

    I have a question if you don't mind. When you say the project needed a bit of luck, do you mean it was "the right product, at the right time" kind of thing, or something similar?

    Do you have any advice for a good Product Hunt page, based on your experience?

    1. 2

      I think a good product is necessary. but no one really knows the right time. Gumdrop met the right time. But we weren't like planing on it. So it's just luck a lot of times. like pure luck.

      I hope that make sense

  2. 1

    yo, congrats on the launch! it's one of many! keep kicking ass!

    and also...

    1. 1

      Lit man, thanks a lot, I am just said hi lol.

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