I’m building a Product Hunt alternative for indie makers — what would make you actually use it?
I’ve been building IndieNeed because I kept noticing the same problem:
You spend weeks or months building a product.
You finally launch it.
And then… almost nobody sees it.
Big launch platforms are extremely competitive, social media reach is unpredictable, and many startup directories feel like places where you submit a link and never get anything back.
So I started building IndieNeed — a product discovery and launch platform focused on indie makers, SaaS founders, AI tools, apps, and side projects.
The goal is simple:
• Make it easy for small products to get discovered
• Give founders a permanent product page + backlink
• Let the community upvote and discover new launches
• Give makers another source of early users and traffic
• Eventually provide useful launch analytics instead of just vanity numbers
I’m still improving the platform, and I’d rather build what founders actually want than guess.
So I have 2 questions for Indie Hackers:
- What would make you submit your product to a new launch platform?
Traffic? Backlinks? Feedback? Rankings? Newsletter exposure? Analytics? Something else?
- What do you hate about existing product launch platforms?
I’d love brutally useful feedback.
And if you have something you’re currently building, feel free to submit it — I’d love to personally check out the first Indie Hackers launches:
👉 https://indieneed.com/submit
Happy to answer any questions about what I’m building too.
Great idea. For me, the most valuable things in a launch platform would be real discovery, quality feedback, backlinks, and meaningful engagement rather than just an upvote count.
One thing I dislike about many launch platforms is that visibility can depend heavily on having an existing audience or paying for promotion. A fair system that gives smaller makers a genuine chance to be discovered would be much more useful.
I’d also value analytics showing where visitors come from and whether they actually engage with or try the product. That would make the platform much more useful beyond launch day.
From the perspective of someone building a pre-launch and waitlist tool, what would make me submit is attribution and follow-through—not another launch-day spike. I’d want to know which visitors clicked through, where they came from, and what happened after the click.
My biggest frustration with existing platforms is that the launch effectively ends after 24 hours. A permanent page plus recurring resurfacing based on meaningful product updates would feel genuinely different. How are you thinking about preventing founders with larger existing audiences from dominating the rankings?
The thing that would make me submit isn't traffic or backlinks — it's early, honest feedback from people who actually try the product. Launch platforms optimize for vanity numbers because those are easy to show. What makers actually need is the first few strangers who click through, use it, and tell you what's broken. If you can make that feedback loop visible and fast, that's a differentiator no directory has. The second thing I hate about existing platforms: they're a one-day event, not a conversation. Your permanent product page idea is the right instinct — build for the week after launch, not the launch day.
Hey, I like your idea.
But as a user, being very honest. I think your idea isn't the issue; it's your website design. Suppose you don't make your own website design. It becomes so hard to stand out.
If I put my hand on the logo, there is no way I can tell which website this is. Please put in some more effort and redesign your whole website to give it a unique look.