Longer answer: you keep building something people need. You spend 100% of your time either acquiring users, talking to users, or building what users need.
You set one metric for the company and work towards that. As an early company, that is usually users. Then it is revenue.
That's really all there is.
If being on product hunt gets you users, that's awesome. If not, it's a waste of time.
If being on HN gets you users or feedback from potential users, that's awesome. Otherwise, it is a waste of time. (I'm going to download this and see if I can spin something up for https://romuluscrm.com, so you got at least 1!)
1) Build something people want.
2) Get it into the hands of those people.
3) Charge them money in proportion to the value you're providing.
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879412309) IPO
Nothing you'll do now matters for the future of your product, not even your appearance on product hunt (which barely is read by your target audience anyway), so just continue with what you were doing before.
I second this, as the perception that PH traffic matters to the long-term success of a startup is a very toxic viewpoint that many naive entrepreneurs hold. (The content-less thought-pieces stating "How I Got #1 on Product Hunt" on Medium do not help)
Product Hunt in general is a negative externality on the startup ecosystem, but that's a topic for another day.
lol....how can I possibly convince you to use it :)
In all seriousness thanks for the comments. They're giving the sense that Product Hunt won't make us overnight millionaires and we've got a hard task ahead of us
Try content marketing? Blog some focused pieces on native mobile dev in general and what sucks, then show how your product makes everyone's lives better and saves the day.
Set a schedule and post, that's the way people will see your name from time to time, and after seeing it for 10 or 20 or 50 times, might want to try. Get on their radar.
See Auth0's blog [1], even though they sell one-click auth, they have a lot of neat content on front-end frameworks and so on.
Welcome to reality. Follow all responses that say to focus on customers (either users or revenue). Flash in the pan hype are blips on the radar for the marathon you are just now starting
congrats. But traffic from product hunt (et al) and news articles, etc is always temporary. So here in a bit it's going to die down, no matter what you do. You may or may NOT get users from it, and there's nothing you can do about that--a lot of times on these types of sites, people are just curious and move on to the next thing tomorrow.
Just remember that, and don't let it discourage you. Keep doing what you're doing and stick to your plan.
Also, product hunt, hn, news articles are not a substitute for a marketing plan. So if you haven't thought about how you're going to get users without them, it's a good time to start thinking about it. Traffic from PH, HN, news, etc should be thought of as a bonus--a nice thing to have.. your startup should not depend on it at all. (Edit: to expand on this.. traffic like PH is semi-random. While marketing is a process. You can't depend on semi-random events. But you can execute and refine a process.)
Hi rgbrenner. Co-founder of Redbeard here. I really appreciate and definitely agree with this comment. I have a great post saved from a few years ago by Alex of GrooveHQ which also mentions the same sentiment: http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/96361/Getting-Crunched-...
Since you are getting plenty of traffic - will getting more feedback help ? If so, can you make giving feedback easily accessible at home page ? So what should be a good question be ? eg:question we are better than say a competitor (fill the name?) because ?
If gaining more users is what you want - will adding a forkme at github help ?
If gaining more traction : add social buttons to spread the word about page ?
The source code is not available as it's a compiled framework however our plan is to soon launch a Marketplace of high quality end to end apps (think clones of Twitter/Instagram/Tinder etc) to give developers a boost when starting their projects. It's also a great way for new developers to learn iOS development.
Capture as many email addresses as you can and start a list so that you can continue to reach out to those that showed initial interest as you build the business.
Currently we show a popup for newsletter signup and to download the Redbeard framework you need to provide your name/email. Which we collect.
The download link is emailed out. Myself and co-founder debated the merits of this . He is of the mind, getting emails is important. I think getting people using the framework and lowering barriers to in order to do that is far more pressing. What would you suggest?
Capturing an email allows to build an ongoing connection. It's easier to sell if you have proven to be useful on the small scale (free articles & advice), than to expect people to buy something as fundamental as a UI framework right off.
Typically yes, but prior products can make their way into lists, where they'll traffic down the road. As for when traffic will die down, honestly, I'd say within a day or 2, based on how people use PH.
Stream about it on Facebook live and retain as many genuine users you pick up as possible.
Throwing up some surveys while you have enough traffic to make them feasible is a good idea, too.
(As others have pointed out, improving the product is still #1, but it doesn't look like you were looking for advice about that side of things in this post)
