My 6-Step Checklist for Successfully Launching on Product Hunt

Since our recent launch on Product Hunt, I’ve been receiving a ton of messages from fellow founders and operators on how to find success with their launch.

Although there are already a ton of resources on how to do this effectively, I recognize that every industry, business model, and company can have a different approach — along with varying learnings and outcomes.

In an effort to open-source Supademo’s own Product Hunt launch strategy, here is a clear breakdown of what we did to prepare for and execute our launch. Hopefully, it's helpful for anyone here that's looking to launch soon!

#Step 1: Establish a clear goal
The first tip is to have a clear goal of what you want to achieve with your Product Hunt launch.

• Is it 100 new users? MRR growth? Getting the attention of investors? Getting a Product of the Day badge?

There’s nothing worse than putting a ton of time into your launch only to not know whether the effort was worthwhile. To avoid wasted time and effort, have a crystal clear goal of what you want to achieve. This will inform your level of preparation, which channels to target, or even which day you want to launch.

#Step 1: Hunt down your launch date and choose your hunter
Once you have a clear goal, it’s time to establish your timelines. Narrow down to whether you want to launch on a weekday or weekend. Generally speaking:

Launch on weekends if —

1. Your priority is to become a top 3 product of the day
2. If you already have a good community around your product
3. Are targeting indie hackers, consumers, or casual audiences
   Launch on weekdays if —
4. You want to create a community around your product
5. You want to gain new paying customers
6. You want your product to be mentioned/amplified in the Product Hunt newsletter

Next, you need to choose a Hunter
While finding a well-known Hunter isn’t a requirement (in fact, you can both build and hunt your own product), it’s generally accepted that a known Hunter will amplify your product distribution and success. Why? Your Hunter will come with an existing pool of followers, helping you hit the ground running — and also serve as social proof during launch.

Step 3: Create a “Coming Soon” page

Next, you’ll want to create a “Coming Soon” page on Product Hunt to funnel leads towards your upcoming launch. Create an engaging “Coming Soon” page on Product Hunt with a teaser for your product. This page helps generate organic buzz and drive visitors to a page with clear intent.

For the next 14 days, link this “Coming Soon” page on your:

• Email signatures
• Websites header
• Blog posts callouts

Step 4: Identify and build your distribution

The next step is identifying your existing distribution channels to approximate how many upvotes you can expect from your existing audience.

In 2023, most “Product of the Day” winners ended up with 1000+ upvotes, so that’s the minimum floor you should aim for if that is the ultimate goal.

From there, you want to identify all of your existing audience channels, potential support sources, and the effort/work required for you to hit your benchmark for each source.

After tallying up your estimates, you should have a clear tally of expected upvotes and the upvote gap you’ll need to fill.

Step 5: Prep tactics for Launch Day

First, clear your calendar for launch day and the day after launch. A good launch will get you lots of exposure, support questions and feedback. You’ll want to make sure you have the time to exploit your launch.

Next, use your calendar to time block specific tactics you’ll deploy throughout the day. For instance, block off time to send off email sequences, post on socials, reach out to your network on LinkedIn, etc.

Assess Competition
A few days before launch, get a pulse on your competition by looking at Product Hunt’s Coming Soon Page. This way, you don’t get surprised by GPT5 launching on the same day.

Draft up your Email Sequences and Messages
Prepare your email sequences or blasts — whether you’re reaching out to existing users or other companies recently launched on Product Hunt. Since Supademo works with companies across 50+ countries, we created three separate emails at different times and locations to align timing.

Step 6: Launch and Grind

Ensure you’re well-rested, properly caffeinated, and ready to grind for 24 hours. A successful launch requires both tactical preparation and relentless effort during launch day.

To ensure you start with a bang, make sure you start reaching out to customers and folks a few hours before 12:01 a.m.

Getting to the first three spots will create organic momentum (e.g., lots of PH visitors don’t scroll below the top three products) that will amplify your launch.

Then, throughout the day, follow through and execute on all of the tactical activities while DM’ing/reaching out to as many people as possible. Your goal is to obnoxiously shout from the rooftops and tell your story — no matter how cringe it can be. Use established tools like LeadDelta to reach out to everyone you know personally.

Ultimately, if you’ve put in the time and effort, you’ll find some success and learn a ton during the process. For Supademo, we ultimately didn’t reach one of our goals of finishing 1st, but we had some solid outcomes.

What I would do differently

In short? A lot.

One of the mistakes we made was pushing back our Product Hunt launch date twice. This led to a loss in momentum and continuity during our planning and preparation.

The other piece is prioritizing momentum during the first 30 minutes of launch. As mentioned above, it can be tough to regain the top 3–5 positions once you’re buried below the fold of the top 10 trending products.

Full blog post here: https://supademo.com/blog/startup-checklist-to-launching-on-product-hunt/