Ryan Hoover

Product Hunt's cold-start playbook: whitelist, curate, evangelize daily

Sam recounts how Ryan Hoover bootstrapped Product Hunt: hand-curated nerdy friends, a rule to only post undiscovered products, whitelisting so only trusted users could post (killing bots and moderation cost while creating exclusivity), and personally thanking/recruiting on Twitter every morning for ~9 months.

“Then he made it where you had to be whitelisted to participate in the community, meaning the average person could not just go post. So that solved the bots problem and the moderation problem because he was only letting trusted people post and anybody could view. And that had this double effect of it was now exclusive. People wanted to get in. They would beg to get in, they would prove themselves, and if they got in, they would be on their best behavior so they wouldn't get kicked out.”

Steal thisWhitelist posting in a new community so only vetted users contribute; it kills spam and makes membership exclusive.

Deel: one button for remote-hire compliance

Shaan flags Deel, an early-stage startup he's exposed to via Ryan Hoover's fund, that handles the painful paperwork and compliance of hiring remote workers across jurisdictions with a single button.

“So there's this company called Deel, D-E-E-L. And I think their URL is something like let'sdeal or getdeal or something like that. But basically it's a, just push a button and we'll take care of all the paperwork and compliance. We'll make sure that you're compliant across all your remote sites.”

Steal thisSolve an annoying-but-universal back-office problem (cross-border hiring compliance) and it becomes valuable to every remote company.

Frame new ventures as 'experiments,' not projects

Ryan Hoover deliberately launched Product Hunt as an 'experiment' with no goal beyond testing whether people found new products interesting. Lowering the stakes from 'company' or even 'project' to 'experiment' removed the pressure that kills early ideas.

“It was an experiment. That's what I called it. Actually, if you look back on the tweet, the word I used was an experiment and there wasn't really an intention or a goal other than just exploring, like, do people find new products really interesting and Do they subscribe to this email list I created?”

Steal thisLaunch your next idea as an 'experiment' with a single question to answer, not a company to build.

Product Hunt started as an email list with 20-30 curators

Product Hunt began as a simple subscribe-able email list that gained a couple hundred subscribers in days. Crucially, Hoover didn't curate the products himself; he recruited 20-30 known founders and investors to share what they found.

“couple hundred people subscribed in the first like couple days, but. From the beginning, it wasn't me curating the products. From the very beginning, it was like, okay, I know a lot of people, founders, investors, people who are in technology who are always exploring new things like yourself. And I think it was 20 or 30 people were sort of the curators, the people that were just sharing new products they found.”

Steal thisSeed a community with a small group of trusted curators rather than producing all the content yourself.

Less than 1.4% of Product Hunt visitors come from the Bay Area

Despite the persistent 'Silicon Valley clique' perception, Hoover checked the metrics: under 1.4% of visitors in the prior 30 days were from the Bay Area. Product Hunt went global almost immediately.

“I checked the metrics the other day and it was less than— what was it, 1.4% I think of visitors in the past 30 days were from the Bay Area. Wow. So that's expected when you get to a certain scale, but it's a tiny micro kind of.”

Product Hunt sold to AngelList for $20M

After going through YC and raising from Andreessen Horowitz, Hoover sold Product Hunt to AngelList. The publicly reported price was $20 million.

“you eventually sell the company. I think publicly it's come out that you sold the company $20 million to AngelList.”

Always tell people the real reason you said no

Hoover argues that giving honest, detailed feedback on a rejection—whether to a job candidate or a founder you're passing on—is rare and valuable. He now sends every founder he meets the specific reasons he isn't investing, because a no with no feedback gives the other person no way to learn.

“we try to— for every face-to-face or video-to-video kind of conversation we have with the founder, we always reply with details of why we're not investing right now. And I feel that's important for a founder to hear because it's really a bummer when you're, you know, pitching and you're going through that whole process, getting a lot of nos, and everyone's saying like, Sorry, no thanks, but no details. Like there's no feedback loop.”

Steal thisWhen you reject someone, write the one real reason—being forced to articulate it sharpens your own thinking too.

Do the work before you get the job

When interviewing at Monkey Inferno, Hoover didn't just pitch ideas for the product case—he went and talked to more of the company's actual users than the in-house team had. Shaan's takeaway: put your hands on the product and show initiative instead of relying on a resume.

“You took the product, you not only had your own ideas of what you could do to make it better, but you went and talked to a bunch of users of our product. And you talked to more users of our product than the guys who were building it in our lab had talked to at the time.”

Steal thisApplying for a job? Talk to the company's users and bring real insights instead of sending a resume.

Product Hunt's CTO hired himself by building a Chrome extension

Andreas, who became Product Hunt's CTO for ~4 years, first caught Hoover's eye by scraping the pre-API site to build a Chrome extension that showed the day's top products in every new browser tab. He demonstrated value before any job existed.

“one day he launches a Chrome extension for Product Hunt. And so this was also, again, experimental phase, not even incorporated, but he launched this Chrome extension, which he created by scraping the site. We didn't have an API or anything back then, scraping the site. And every time you'd open up a new tab, you'd see the day's most upvoted products every day. And that caught my eye”

Steal thisBuild something useful on top of a company you want to join—it can make hiring you a no-brainer.

Success has many flavors; failure boils down to the same five

Shaan's heuristic: rather than copying a 'right way' that varies wildly across winners, focus on eliminating the small set of common, avoidable failure modes. Hoover applies the same logic to product—rule out the obvious wrong solutions and explore the uncertain ones quickly.

“It's better to focus on those and just eliminate those as possibilities than try to say, oh, this is the right way to do it because X person did it that way, because you'll find another person did it a different way. Success typically has many, many flavors. Failure sort of boils down to the same 5.”

Steal thisDon't chase the 'right way'—identify and eliminate the handful of repeatable failure modes instead.

Building the community brick by brick with personal emails

Shaan reads the actual second email Hoover sent him in November 2013: a Product Hunt MVP with ~175 subscribers and 30 contributors, asking for opinions and offering mockups. Hoover personally pounded out emails and tweets to early users, which made each member feel like an insider.

“my Product Hunt LinkyDink MVP, you were using LinkyDink at the time, is showing signs of traction. I haven't promoted it outside my own blog, Quib, and a couple of tweets, and I got about 175 subscribers and 30 kick-ass contributors. But what's even more encouraging is the unsolicited emails and face-to-face conversations people telling me they love it.”

Steal thisHand-write personal emails to your first users and ask for opinions—it converts know-it-alls into evangelists.

Make a community feel alive, then keep doing what works

Hoover's core community insight: people want to join something with visible momentum, so he manually welcomed users to ensure that each return visit showed more upvotes, comments, and familiar faces. The meta-lesson: once you find something that works, keep doing it until it stops working.

“with communities, you need to feel, it needs to feel alive and it needs to feel like there's momentum. And I knew that, okay, I should just continue to do what's working, which is doing a lot of manual things like welcoming people directly and personally through email, Twitter, and so on, and just keep doing that and make sure that we can trickle in more users and get more activity going”

Steal thisManufacture visible momentum for a new community, and keep running a working tactic until it stops working.

Build your business on Twitter by amplifying small wins

Shaan credits Hoover as one of the first to build a company on Twitter that had nothing to do with Twitter—taking nuggets like 'Ashton Kutcher just signed up' and amplifying them into a daily drumbeat of good news that pulled people in. He notes Lambda School's Austin Allred doing the same by spotlighting other people's wins.

“I've joked around with, with friends that I feel like you were the first guy to build your business on Twitter that had nothing to do with Twitter. And today,— in this other company we invested in, Lambda School, the founder, Austin Allred, he's doing the same thing. He shares every victory on Twitter and people love it.”

Steal thisBuild a public drumbeat of wins on Twitter—especially other people's wins—to grow a product unrelated to Twitter.

Use press as a tool by helping journalists do their job

Press rarely drives sustainable users, but it worked for Product Hunt because TechCrunch readers were exactly Product Hunt's audience. Hoover fed journalists like Josh Constine cool new products, which earned backlinks and goodwill—being helpful kept Product Hunt top of mind.

“every now and then I would email someone at, let's say, Josh Constine at TechCrunch and say, hey, Josh, I know you're like really interested in consumer social. Here's this new app that we found through Product Hunt. It's really cool. And for me, it was hopefully it was helpful. In some cases they're like, oh, cool, Ryan, you know, whatever. In other cases they're like, oh, that's really cool. Can you introduce me to the founder?”

Steal thisFeed journalists genuinely useful leads in their beat; the backlinks and goodwill follow naturally.

Product Hunt's costly bet on gaming, books, and podcast verticals

After raising a Series A in ~2015, Hoover expanded Product Hunt into gaming, books, and podcast verticals, reasoning each had the same creator-wants-distribution dynamic. He spent months designing and hiring vertical community leads—but it didn't drive growth and the products weren't good, his biggest costly mistake.

“Probably the biggest costly mistakes, which I take full responsibility for, was— this was about 2015 or so, so this was after we raised our Series A, we had long runway, lots to explore. Part of the vision and the direction was, okay, we had a really amazing community in technology, cool place to discover new apps and tech products and so on. We believe that this can expand into other categories that have similar dynamics.”

Optionality is everything in an exit

Hoover's advice for founders weighing an exit: pursue optionality. You don't have to take every option, but holding both an acquisition offer and a Series B offer simultaneously is ten times better than having only one.

“I think one important thing for founders to take to heart is optionality. Optionality is everything. Doesn't mean you have to pursue all options. But if you have, you know, an acquisition offer and a Series B offer, that's like 10 times better than just having one offer, right?”

Steal thisWhen approaching an exit, engineer a real second option so you negotiate from strength, not desperation.

Stack parallel bets that earn without spending your time

Hoover structures his career around leverage, echoing Naval: run multiple parallel things—Product Hunt/AngelList equity, the Weekend Fund—where output isn't tied to hours worked. The fund's payoff depends on picking great companies, not on his time input.

“I'm really trying to explore, okay, how can I have multiple parallel things going on that gain leverage and either create money in some way or impact in other ways? And that's not using my time. So this is going back to what I said before. I hate getting paid by my time. With the fund, of course, I spend a lot of time on it, but my time doesn't have a direct input in the outcome, right?”

Steal thisBuild income streams whose outcome isn't a function of hours worked—equity, funds, products—so you stop selling time.

Back founders who can educate and surprise you about their space

Hoover's investing filter for very early companies with no traction: look for the non-obvious insight. If he can foresee all the answers to a founder's questions, something is wrong—the founder should know vastly more than him and surprise him with what the market doesn't yet see.

“if I, can almost foresee all the answers to their questions, that's something wrong, meaning they should know way more than me about a space. They should almost be educating me and surprising me with something that they've seen that the market doesn't see. And so sometimes it requires kind of weird, out-there ideas.”

Steal thisInvest in founders who can teach you something non-obvious about their market—and chase the weird, unproven ideas.

Main Street: 'free money' by automating R&D tax credits

Ryan Hoover describes Main Street, a portfolio company whose pitch is literally free money: most startups don't know they qualify for government grants and incentives per engineer hire, the application is painful, and the payout takes months. Main Street plugs into your QuickBooks or payroll, automates the whole filing, and takes a small cut of the recovered cash.

“a lot of startups and companies, including like myself, up until now don't realize that you can actually get government grants and incentives per engineer hire and other things like that. And one, people don't know about it. Two, it's a pain in the ass to actually apply for. And three, you then have to wait for the government to send you money like several months in the future. So they basically, you plug in your QuickBooks or your payroll and it just like automates that entire process for you. They take like a small sliver of that money. And so it's like literally free money, which is like a crazy sell.”

Steal thisFind a government rebate or credit businesses are owed but rarely claim, automate the filing on top of their existing accounting data, and take a slice of the recovered cash.

Vertical job marketplaces beat horizontal job boards

Ryan Hoover's thesis: general-purpose job boards stay valuable, but a company built around one specific vertical can serve both the talent supply and the hiring demand far better than a horizontal board, making the category both impactful and lucrative.

“There are general purpose job boards, and those have existed, and those will continue to be valuable in many ways. But if you really build a company around like a very specific vertical, you can ultimately serve both the supply and the demand, the talent and the people looking to hire that talent much better than you would typically with like a horizontal job board.”

Steal thisPick one industry with high job turnover and build the niche talent marketplace instead of competing with a horizontal job board.

The off-platform leakage problem in talent marketplaces

Ryan Hoover names the core risk of freelance marketplaces: keeping both sides on-platform. Clients work projects, churn within 3-6 months, or try to pull the freelancer off-platform to hire them full-time, so retention is the hard part.

“I think the hard thing with these businesses oftentimes is how do you avoid people going off platform? And then how do you also keep companies, you know, retained? So one of the challenges is let's say you work with a marketer and you like them and either you work on them with them on a project basis. And so there's ultimately going to be churn in 3 to 6 months, like no matter what, or they try to like take them off platform and just work with them full-time.”

Steal thisDesign retention and lock-in into a talent marketplace from day one; assume both sides will try to leave and go off-platform.

The off-platform leakage problem in talent marketplaces

Ryan Hoover names the core risk of freelance marketplaces: keeping both sides on-platform. Clients work projects, churn within 3-6 months, or try to pull the freelancer off-platform to hire them full-time, so retention is the hard part.

“I think the hard thing with these businesses oftentimes is how do you avoid people going off platform? And then how do you also keep companies, you know, retained? So one of the challenges is let's say you work with a marketer and you like them and either you work on them with them on a project basis. And so there's ultimately going to be churn in 3 to 6 months, like no matter what, or they try to like take them off platform and just work with them full-time.”

Steal thisDesign retention and lock-in into a talent marketplace from day one; assume both sides will try to leave and go off-platform.

Pattern: a marketplace for reliable hourly event staff

Ryan Hoover describes Pattern, a marketplace for hourly workers that started in hospitality. The wedge: assembling reliable, qualified crews (bouncers, waitstaff, cooks) to show up at the right time for an event, an overlooked sector because tech ignores hourly warehousing, hospitality, and cleaning work.

“Basically what Pattern is, it's a marketplace for hourly workers. They started off initially with hospitality. And an example here is let's say you're doing an event and you need 2 bouncers, you need some waitstaff, you need a few cooks, you need all these people to assemble at this particular time that have the right skills and you need them to be reliable because you don't want one of the cooks not to show up on your event day.”

Steal thisBuild a vertical staffing marketplace for an overlooked hourly sector (hospitality, warehousing, cleaning) where reliability and qualification are the value prop.

Find the one big risk, and the unique edge that solves it

Ryan Hoover's investing lens: assume everyone has already tried everything, so something must have changed (consumer behavior or technology) and the team must have a unique ability to solve the single biggest risk. For Product Hunt, the one risk wasn't tech, it was building the community.

“what is the big risk in this company? And I also make an assumption that everyone has tried everything. And so either something has to have changed, whether it's like a consumer behavior shift or technology shift, and that founder or that team also has to have some sort of like unique ability to like solve for the biggest problem or risk. So with Product Hunt, Product Hunt is the community piece. It's not hard to build Product Hunt from a technical perspective. The product design is important, but fundamentally it's all in how you build the community in the beginning.”

Steal thisIdentify the single biggest risk in a business and ask what changed and what unique edge the team has to solve it.

Solve the hard side of the marketplace first

Ryan Hoover's marketplace rule: figure out which side is harder to acquire and solve that first. Focusing only on the easy side just delays failure. For freelance talent platforms, talent is usually the hard side, because once you have high-quality talent, the hiring demand follows.

“I tend to try to think about which is the harder side of the market and try to solve for that first. And so without giving information about like how Pattern accomplished it, they were able to find that balance and get both talent that seemed to be high enough quality and also demand at the same time. And then like balance that and scale that as they grew. But that's how we tend to think about it. 'Cause marketplace models, the risk of these is when people focus on the easy side of the market and ultimately you need both to work. But if you focus only on the easy side, you never get the hard side and you like delay the hard side in a sense, then you're almost like delaying failure is kind of how I see it.”

Steal thisIdentify the harder side of your marketplace and solve it first; chasing only the easy side just delays failure.

Start with a community before you even know the product

Ryan Hoover's go-to-market: build a community or audience first, even before knowing exactly what the product is. It gives you two things, a ready audience for launch day, and deep insight into what product those people actually need.

“I'm a big fan, big proponent of community-driven, like community-driven strategies where maybe you don't even know what the product is exactly, but starting off with a community and building something for them or building an audience of some sort. Is super valuable because it'll give you two things. Like, one, it'll give you an audience for when you launch the thing, and two, it'll hopefully give you a lot of insight into like how you can build a great product for those people.”

Steal thisBuild the community or audience first; it gives you a launch-day audience and product insight before you've built anything.

Ryan Hoover's three ingredients of a real community

Ryan Hoover defines community against the lazy 'my Twitter followers are my community' framing. A real community requires three things: members interacting with each other, a sense of belonging (often signaled through swag and identity), and genuine utility or value people get from being there.

“a community requires people in that community to interact with each other. It really isn't a community unless they're interacting in some form or another. Two, community is really about a sense of belonging of some sort. And so if you go, like an example is like church and religion is like the ultimate community.”

Steal thisStress-test whether you have a community on three fronts: do members interact, do they feel belonging, and do they get real utility.

The value equation for picking a job-marketplace vertical

Sam's heuristic for which job-marketplace vertical is worth attacking: value equals hourly pay times number of workers times how often they get a new job. Oil workers pay well with frequent jobs; truckers pay low but number in the millions with constant churn; marketers are few but cost ~$100K/year over a couple jobs.

“what does the value equal? Like, what are the variables that combine equal value? And it's like, um, hourly pay of the worker times number of workers times quantity, like how often they get a new job. And so I'm like, all right, oil workers, like there's a fair bit of them, they make $50 an hour, and they're always getting new jobs.”

Steal thisRank job-marketplace verticals by hourly pay times worker count times job frequency.

Attack low-trust markets so the marketplace becomes the reputation layer

Ryan Hoover adds a variable to picking a vertical: target markets with low trust, where there's no good way to verify a worker's ability. The marketplace can build the trust and reputation layer, which raises retention because workers rely on the identity they've built there to win more jobs and money.

“I think another variable is which market has really low trust. So meaning right now, if you were to hire someone and there really isn't a great way to trust or have some sort of verification of this person's abilities. I think that's also a really interesting place because theoretically you could start building trust essentially through a marketplace. And that also lends itself to potentially higher retention. If this person, this talent is relying on this marketplace where they've built an identity and maybe reputation of some sort, that also helps them get more jobs or get more money.”

Steal thisTarget a vertical where worker quality is hard to verify, and make your marketplace the trust and reputation layer to drive retention.