My journey from idea to hundreds of sign-ups in 1 week
Hello Indie Hackers!
I've been diligently working on my competitor tracking tool, RivalHunt (rivalhunt.co), over the past few weeks, and in this brief post, I'd like to provide an overview of my current progress and share the journey that led me here.
Here's a timeline of my journey:
September 6 💡
While engrossed in a completely different startup project (a topic I might delve into in a separate post), I stumbled upon the realization that there were no dedicated tools to assist Indie Hackers and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in tracking their competitors. After exploring existing solutions and failing to find one that met my expectations (or was worth paying for), I decided to validate my idea by creating a simple landing page instead of immediately diving into product development. Thanks to tools like Astro and Vercel, I was able to code the page in just a few hours and design the initial mockups shortly after.
September 7 👀
I posted about my idea on Indie Hackers. Encouraged by the positive feedback I received (https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-created-an-automated-competitors-tracking-tool-for-startups-4226540924), I took a leap of faith and began strategizing how to swiftly build the first version of RivalHunt.
September 8. Product Hunt 🔥
Continuing with my validation strategy, I posted RivalHunt on Product Hunt. To my surprise, it garnered 130+ upvotes, over 10 comments, accumulated a waiting list of 200+ people, and secured the 11th position in rankings – all within just two days of conceptualizing the idea. The official ProductHunt Twitter account also featured my product, reaching around 10,000 views and significantly boosting its visibility. During this period, I was already immersed in the technical implementation, accomplishing some foundational functionality (stay tuned for technical insights in future posts).
September 9 🏗️
My primary objective at this juncture was to launch the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Consequently, my days were consumed by coding and concentrating on tasks essential for initial progress. The mantra "Do things that don't scale" aptly described my approach, as I discarded anything that didn't directly contribute to my goal of preparing the first MVP for early user access.
Last week, I officially launched RivalHunt with an initial group of early adopters, and I'm delighted to report that we've already gained active users who are actively tracking their competitors, providing valuable feedback, and contributing to product enhancements. To keep our users informed, I've established a Changelog, which you can find at https://rivalhunt.co/changelog. Additionally, I've set up a Twitter presence at https://twitter.com/RivalHuntHQ (currently with close to 0 followers, so if you've followed along this far, please consider subscribing! 😆).
I have plans to share more on Indie Hackers, covering topics ranging from the technical aspects to my marketing efforts and general progress updates. Cheers, and thank you for your unwavering support! 🙌
So it's all about marketing.
Getting something in hands of users who are interested and then iterating quickly!
Good to see actual example and steps you took.
thanks!
You really did fill up a gap worth paying for. That’s amazing
Your timeline shows an impressive speed from idea to execution, which is incredibly inspiring for me. The way you validated RivalHunt through platforms like Product Hunt and quickly adapted based on feedback sets a great example.
It's a testament to the power of focusing on an MVP and listening to your initial user base. Looking forward to following your updates and diving deeper into the technical and marketing aspects of your journey!
It sounds like Product Hunt launch went better than expected which is great. If it didn't pan out, what would your approach have been to keep the momentum going?
PH doesn't have a rule on whether the published product has to be ready, or don't they care?
Really inspiring story! I was just wondering what did you do for validation before deciding to launch on ProductHunt? (AKA what gave you the confidence to show your idea to the world without even having a product haha) Thanks!
I used Indie Hackers to validate my product! I did a post where I described the product to see if there is going to be any demand for it so it gave me some confidence that maybe the broader audience (ProductHunt) can be interested in that as well.
Thanks for sharing! I would like to ask, did you do anything else on PH before posting?
I did not. I prepared a single screenshot of the product and that's it. I didn't include the link to my product hunt launch so here is it: https://www.producthunt.com/products/rivalhunt#rivalhunt
Best of luck. Do share the updates here.
thanks! will do.
@semanser To be clear: You posted to Product Hunt when there was still only the landing page? It looks like really nice validation you received there. What a great start!
yeah, that's pretty much how it happened. I decided to launch before having the product to get some initial validation.
@semanser Nice! I'm curious - what did you learn from the PH launch? Were you able to convert any of that attention to off-platform list-building?
The main piece of advice is to launch fast. Then iterate based on the feedback from early adopters. I received around 200 emails in the waiting list thanks to PH. It’s also important not only to get the emails but to be able to get these users to use the app and get some feedback from them. So I am focusing on a smaller subset from this waiting list each week which gives me enough time to make sure people don’t have any technical or product issues when using the MVP (as well as applying their feature requests etc).