When the email arrived, Jordan Walker wasn’t ready for it. The message was from Ryan Hoover, founder and CEO of Product Hunt, a site that surfaces cool new projects. It was a heads-up about the next episode of his podcast. “I chatted briefly about Kindly,” Hoover said in the email. “That might be a good day to post if you’re ready. :)”
Walker and the tiny team behind his anonymous messaging app, Kindly, had planned on a few more weeks of development before releasing to the public. But when Hoover comes calling, you listen.
Founded just over a year ago, Product Hunt has become a force to be reckoned with in the startup world. For companies that land in the top slot of Product Hunt’s Reddit-like homepage–as Kindly and many others have–the payoff is dramatic.
After being listed on the site, the secure credit card alternative Final jumped from 191 signups to nearly 10,000 overnight. Within 48 hours, they broke 20,000 signups.
But for Final, the traffic was nowhere near as valuable as the discussion it generated. “The traffic that you get is not even close to top benefit,” says Ben Apel, Final’s director of marketing. The real Product Hunt bump comes from the tech influencers who frequent the site, who in turn attract media coverage and in some cases lead to investments.
One minute, Kindly was an unknown app. The next, TechStars managing director Alex Iskold was commenting on it and Path cofounder Dave Morin was upvoting it. “Instead of testing with 20 of my friends,” says Walker, “I got to do a public beta with thousands of people who know what they’re talking about.”
Then the press comes knocking. In Kindly’s case–which is fairly typical–reporters from major news outlets wanted to know more about his startup and future plans. Walker talked to a Mashable reporter for 10 minutes, expecting a brief mention in a newsy write-up or perhaps a roundup of anonymous chat apps.
