Pointless to launch in ProductHunt without PR?

While it probably won't hurt to have a lot of followers already, there are a lot of other factors at play. One could simply be luck. If you make it to the top 5 early, chances are you'll stay there for the rest of the day. That depends a lot of course on what else is being launched on that day. Another factor is how well your product fits with the usual PH audience. Lastly simpler products seem to perform much better.

At the end of the day PH can give you some good initial momentum but in the long-term it doesn't really matter. A failed launch might be demotivating but should not mean the failure of your product. It's just one of many steps you can take to market your product and it shouldn't be the only one either way.

Checked out your product. I totally dig it and can see it grow.

Why not offer @kitze and other influencers a chance to promote you?

I for one, constantly ask people what setups they use.
I know Kitze is getting asked that question more than I'd like.

Thanks @Grendorf, @mdo, @sillycube, @_abhi and @Felixg for all the helpful replies. Just thinking out loud that if a product isn’t a good fit for PH, then one might as well just launch without doing all the PR work and test out the real response. On the other hand, you get only one chance and should try to gain as much visibility as possible by getting on to the Popular page early. Guess the answer is clear and the decision will be based on timeframe and the effort one is willing to put in.

I got top 400 product all time and growing with no "PR".

TLDR; get 25 upvotes and have a good product that matches PH audience.

my views on PH launches https://versoly.com/blog/lessons-learned-3-successful-product-hunt-launches

I would say so. It takes time and effort to not only get product/market fit but also marketing excitement and fit for your product. My advice is to work months (2 months ahead) of your desired date of "launch" on PH, and create a calendar. One or two "big" efforts per week, and several smaller PR efforts. Things like this take time.

I launched without pr or any reposts. Moreover I posted in the morning and my post has been buried to the bottom of the listing with 2-4 likes or so.
The interesting part is, the PH team moved it to the next day listing, and it got #2 Product of the day. I didn’t even notice it, until they mentioned me on their twitter by the end of the day.
I bet I could move it to the 1st place if I prepared properly, but, after all, it’s just the one of marketing channels, and there are plenty of other ones

I launched on product hunt a few years ago with pretty much nothing, the discussion is mostly people trying to figure out where it came from. :P https://www.producthunt.com/posts/insights-analytics

I ended up getting a few hundred users from it.

Most people's advice I see around product hunt is to either do everything to make your product hunt go well. Finding a hunter, having an audience ready to support you, launching on blogs simultaneously, etc etc.

Or just post it and hope it goes somewhere and don't spend all your time on it, instead focus on other aspects of growing your business that will be more consistent etc.

We did it completely haphazardly with no PR and no banner on our landing, etc. If we did, I imagine we could have easily been in the top 3. Without doing anything, we were at #8 for the day.

If we were to do it again with more wisdom, we would let people know here and on other places that the PH campaign was running. Also, probably would try to get hunted by someone with a lot of followers, etc.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/my-digital-office

It depends on whether your target audience match with PH audience. If you don't have a thousand Twitter followers, you can still ask your tech friends to help

This thread helped me get some perspective if you haven't already seen it:

But yeah looks like you'll have to put in substantial work pre-launch to make PH work.