Product Explorer

A database with extensive data on 15,000+ products.

No Employees
Founders Code
Solo Founder
Analytics
Investing

Product Explorer is a categorized database of 15k+ products and extensions. It can be used to identify acquisition targets, to find abandoned projects you can revive, and to develop a data-driven launch strategy.

October 30, 2020 First Sale

Really happy that just a few minutes after the launch I made my first sale. I offered 100 90-day trials at a relatively cheap price to validate whether or not there is demand for Product Explorer.

At least one person thought that it's a product worth paying for.

October 30, 2020 Launched on Product Hunt

I just submitted the site to Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/product-explorer

As with my previous launch, I tried to keep everything as simple as
possible. I added a few screenshots, the logo, and a short description.
Moreover, I tried submitting the project "at the right time" to make
sure it has the whole day to collect votes.

Any feedback or comment would be greatly appreciated.

October 28, 2020 Finished MVP and asked Beta Testers for Help

I finished the first version of Product Explorer and asked on Twitter for help. Far more people than I had expected expressed their interest in beta-testing the product and I gathered some great feedback this way.

Particularly encouraging was that one beta-tester found the product immediately useful and started using it as intended.

September 22, 2020 Came up with the idea

I got the idea for Product Explorer after hearing Andrew Wilkinson mentioning the following idea on the My First Million podcast:

"One of the things I have been thinking about and haven't really executed but I think I would if I were starting today is that there is all these cool products that are on Product Hunt. Every day you think "that's cool". But most of them fizzle. Sometimes they fell to catch and didn't go viral, but a lot of the time it's started by a developer and the developer doesn't understand how to market and grow something. So what I was thinking is that it would be smart to go through product hunt, go back 6 months, and just look at the coolest shit that came out. And then start approaching all these developers and say: "look I give you 5 grand". And to them, they're like "This is useless to me, I've already shut it down, I don't want to pay for hosting". But for you it could be a 5 million dollar business."

Moreover, I read Nathan Latka's book where he mentions:

"Free apps and web extensions are perfect buys for beginners. They hit all of these criteria and you can usually get them for little money because the owners aren’t making substantial income off them. [...] Another bonus: the owners are often individuals or tiny companies that built the software as a side project. Because the asset is not their main focus, they’re more likely to let it go."

This got me thinking: How can I make this kind of research more effective?

About

Product Explorer is a categorized database of 15k+ products and extensions. It can be used to identify acquisition targets, to find abandoned projects you can revive, and to develop a data-driven launch strategy.