KSwissPo

Fuck you @ProductHunt 💩🖕 I will probably get banned from there because of this post, but fuck it, it's time to stop lying to your users First, @iamjasonlevin showed how it was on the inside (imagine the CTO not knowing the #1 person in the audience. Still not sure if it was all a joke or not tbh) And today, like many other makers, they purposely did not feature a new tool I launched... ❌ While featuring apps that had nothing to do here according to THEIR OWN criteria. I'll share my 2 theories on why they do that at the end, but first... 👉 Let's see the featured competition After all, maybe my project was just too basic compared to others, no? Their 4 main criteria are: - 💡Useful - 🎁 Novel - 🔨High Craft - 🎨Creative I won't judge my own app, but let's look at some of the top featured products at the time of writing this post instead: 1️⃣ A course platform to learn to code - ❌ Courses/Infoproducts are not supposed to be featured according to them - ❌ The landing page is almost empty, no social links no contact info - ❌ The hero section is just a headline with a flashy green background Useful maybe. Novel, High Craft and Creative? I have doubts. 2️⃣ A white noise app - ❌ No landing page or websites, the PH link sends straight to the app store (and it's paid) - ❌ The main feature is that it shows a cassette video on your iPhone when playing the noises - ❌That's it. It's literally what the app does Creative? No. Novel? No Useful? Maybe High-craft? Can't judge without buying 3️⃣ AI Reel generator - ❌ No landing page, just a signup form - ❌Same as the 100th of other tools launched - ❌No demo, no landing page, just a signup form Creative? No. Novel? No. Useful? Somewhat. High craft? Landing page don't show 4️⃣ I don't even know what this app is - ❌Website says "Fast creation of websites and mobile applications for food delivery" - ❌So I guess a boilerplate to make food delivery apps? Boilerplates are not allowed - ❌Takes +5 seconds to load page - ❌ Text looks straight out of Google Translate I could keep going and find more examples but... There is no way a 100% functional FREE app, that took 100 hours to build and people use AND like... (based on feedback I received) ...is less “Useful, Novel, Creative and High Craft” than this: You’re lying. I don’t know what this is about, but certainly not those criteria. No fking way. Especially since apps similar to the one I was launching got approved in the past few months. ==================== 👉 So now, let’s speculate on WHY they do that ==================== Context: If you didn’t know, they laid off 60% of their staff last year (techcrunch.com/2023/10/19/pr…). Not only that, but according to href, they went from 2 million per month in organic traffic in 2023 to barely 800k in 2024 Imo that sounds like financial trouble. Financial trouble = Need money fast to survive. I’m only sharing theories here, it might be totally wrong. But imo there some reasons that would justify everything happening lately: 1️⃣ VC-backed startups This one is pretty obvious. VC-backed startups have money to throw on ads, and ProductHunt offers exactly that. Their ad service starts at $5000. According to what they quoted me last year, it costs around $55 to show your ad to 1000 persons (called “CPM”, for Cost per mile). This is NOT clicks, just your ad being shown to people, no matter if they look at it or click. The quote seemed to imply there is no targeting options, and a worldwide audience (they might have added options since then?) As comparison: 👉 Facebook Ads CPM is usually from $10 to $50 for a well targeted audiences in countries like US-UK-CA-AUS-EU (sometimes more expensive if competition) 👉Reddit Ads CPM on specific subreddits starts at $2 based on my tests 👉 Twitter ads CPM are around the same as Reddit So, definitely on the expensive side. Imo this is an advertising strategy suited for Awareness ads = Ads that don’t generate sales immediately. Agencies and platforms love this because it’s very hard to measure the impact of awareness 🥲 But what does it have to do with getting approved?🤔🤔 Simple! You don’t want to offend your best customers. If a VC-backed startup launch and does not get their “Product of the day” badge, they will not be happy. And since the ad platform is not that great, it’s easy to ditch them (this is only my opinion, as someone who managed over $1,000,000 in ads and has worked in the advertising field for 7 years. Yes, this is not much but enough to get an opinion) But why the badge? 🤔🤔 When I was selling MakeLogo AI, my first startup, that got "Product of the day", I talked with a potential buyer working with VCs. He offered me to work for him to launch startups, get “Product of the day”, then pass them over to his team. 👉 According to him, the award is a massive social proof for investors. So, for a startup with a few hundred thousands in funding, $5,000 to get a badge who could potentially unlock a million of funding is nothing. Especially if they can justify it under “advertising expense” I doubt there is any formal agreement, they probably just check if a startup is VC-backed as criteria to feature them or not. And maybe, maaaaaybe be more strict with other competing products who could have a chance of winning that day 🙃 Again, this is pure speculation, I might be completely wrong. But since PH team never comment about that, we can only make speculations. The only thing that’s sure here: - 👉The badge is valuable to VC startups - 👉 They need money - 👉 They have purposely vague criteria. Make your own opinion 2️⃣ FOMO operation Not from me and seems unlikely because doing it would be a big fat middle finger to their users, but could interesting one still. @raj_raj88 suggested they could be doing that to make people scared of not being featured then add some kind of premium verification that guarantee to be featured at launch. Tons of directories have popped up in the last 3 years, and lots of them ask to pay a fee to be listed (There Is An AI For That is now $300 !!!). But it works! Startup pays. You get some exposure, and a backlink in most cases. But what does it have to do with featuring? 🤔 👉 If everyone sees posts of makers not being featured on PH, and they add a paid verification to be featured, everyone buys because they don’t want to risk not being featured Too big to be true IMO, I really hope they won't do that. Again, just sharing speculations/theories ================= 👉 CONCLUSION 👈 ================== There might be more, especially with all the spam services offering to pay to get upvotes and the weird upvotes graphs It's fine if they only want to feature VC-backed startup, but be clear about it. Don't lie to your audience. I'm sure most people would be fine to pay $$ to get their app listed. But imo, they ruined what used to be the best platform to launch and discover new products The main takeaway: 👉 Don’t waste hours on your ProductHunt launch and bring your own audience there. Just list your app and move on. Hopefully, we’ll get another alternative soon. The maker community deserve better (pls link if you're working on one) , I would love to get proven wrong on everything here, or at least get an explanation for what’s happening. What are the exact criteria to be listed?