Analysis of Product Hunt products from 2014 to 2021(components.one)
components.one
Analysis of Product Hunt products from 2014 to 2021
https://components.one/posts/gamer-and-nihilist-product-hunt
69 comments
Fun article but not really about product hunt after the first few paragraphs.
Mind fuck - product hunt is not about product hunting either.
It’s spec work. It’s not super clear that’s what it is, but the specs given to you on product hunt are the current zeitgeist. Whether you like it or not, you will build your apps for this hivemind and not for any real problem space.
Mind fuck - product hunt is not about product hunting either.
It’s spec work. It’s not super clear that’s what it is, but the specs given to you on product hunt are the current zeitgeist. Whether you like it or not, you will build your apps for this hivemind and not for any real problem space.
> Whether you like it or not, you will build your apps for this hivemind and not for any real problem space.
That assumes the person in question gives two shits about Product Hunt. What I learned from that website is that it isn’t worth it at all. It’s procrastination. It’s a place where wannabe founders gather to look productive and cool. People actually brag about being “top hunters”. It’s cringe worthy.
Back in the real world, every time I searched for a piece of software and landed on Product Hunt, the thing is already dead less than a year after being featured. Successful products become so despite Product Hunt, not because of it. Time and again I’ve seen good products which still endure not do well on PH, while vapid VC-funded hype is praised.
On the other hand, it has become a great filter. Every time I land on a product’s website and they brag about being “Product of the Day” or whatever, it’s usually the only outside validation they can point to. It is a fantastic indicator that what the creators care about is not aligned with my values, and that they’re likely to be in it only for the profit and will abandon the software at the first sign of difficulty.
That assumes the person in question gives two shits about Product Hunt. What I learned from that website is that it isn’t worth it at all. It’s procrastination. It’s a place where wannabe founders gather to look productive and cool. People actually brag about being “top hunters”. It’s cringe worthy.
Back in the real world, every time I searched for a piece of software and landed on Product Hunt, the thing is already dead less than a year after being featured. Successful products become so despite Product Hunt, not because of it. Time and again I’ve seen good products which still endure not do well on PH, while vapid VC-funded hype is praised.
On the other hand, it has become a great filter. Every time I land on a product’s website and they brag about being “Product of the Day” or whatever, it’s usually the only outside validation they can point to. It is a fantastic indicator that what the creators care about is not aligned with my values, and that they’re likely to be in it only for the profit and will abandon the software at the first sign of difficulty.
This is the truth about PH. I've had a blog post living rent free in my head for about a year called "Product Hunt is not a marketing strategy" that outlines the farce that PH is.
They pitch it as being able to get exposure from a large, varied audience, except that's not the case at all. Try launching something that doesn't have to do with AI. Go ahead, try, and let me know how it goes. :)
They pitch it as being able to get exposure from a large, varied audience, except that's not the case at all. Try launching something that doesn't have to do with AI. Go ahead, try, and let me know how it goes. :)
Product Hunt was relevant...a decade ago.
I was skeptical too - friends encouraged me to post my latest project there, a panoramic camera app I made entirely for my own satisfaction (I certainly used none of the “growth hacking” best practices like ads/tracking/upsell popup on first launch/excessive subscription that counts on people forgetting to turn off auto renew).
I posted it on Product Hunt and got a good response, made it to the front page even (link if anyone’s curious: https://www.producthunt.com/products/65x24#65x24)
I don’t doubt that there’s a broader metagame that can be hacked, but in my limited experience legitimate passion projects still have a shot there.
I posted it on Product Hunt and got a good response, made it to the front page even (link if anyone’s curious: https://www.producthunt.com/products/65x24#65x24)
I don’t doubt that there’s a broader metagame that can be hacked, but in my limited experience legitimate passion projects still have a shot there.
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I wrote a blog article (now defunct) years ago about this, which I called "The cyclical nature of shiny new hammers". This was the basic premise. If the workforce is a bunch of carpenters and productivity apps are hammers, there will always be a subset of carpenters who chase after shiny new hammers. I do think there are productivity gains by these new hammers but they are marginal at best.
I like the analogy directionally, but I think it understates the problem significantly. A hammer is a tool used by an actual builder, the analogy for software engineers would be an IDE or perhaps certain programming languages or infra components. We've all known some practitioners who pay a little too much attention to the tools and not enough to the final output.
Productivity tools in general are for larger scale endeavors with lots of ICs. At some point you start to have stakeholders whose only job is coordination. That's where the real risk of these systems lie—when their usage is so far removed from the actual work that needs doing that feeding the system becomes its own justification.
Productivity tools in general are for larger scale endeavors with lots of ICs. At some point you start to have stakeholders whose only job is coordination. That's where the real risk of these systems lie—when their usage is so far removed from the actual work that needs doing that feeding the system becomes its own justification.
Could you share a link?
Edit: missed "now defunct". But if it's somewhere on archive.org would love to read.
Edit: missed "now defunct". But if it's somewhere on archive.org would love to read.
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In my opinion, the dominance of post-USSR countries (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus) among makers/hunters is not surprising at all, and can be explained by a somewhat inflated, romanticized, almost evangelistic view on computer technologies in these countries.
The computer technologies and associated market could freely develop in those countries after the USSR collapse in 1992. This tendency was fueled by the abundance of high quality STEM education traditionally available in the region. (Historically, STEM education was subsidized by the USSR government and its military ambitions.)
I believe that the digital evangelism arose due to exceptional freedom of IT companies in those countries. While other, more traditional industries have been raided and decimated by their own corrupt governments, the IT sector remained out of reach of dirty hands.
Those circumstances gave the IT industry in the post-Soviet countries a significant advantage. It was a melting pot of new ideas, makers, universities, companies and startups.
Since then, however, the dynamics changed due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. A lot of companies already committed an exodus to other jurisdictions, while remaining companies will be forced to make it in the future.
The computer technologies and associated market could freely develop in those countries after the USSR collapse in 1992. This tendency was fueled by the abundance of high quality STEM education traditionally available in the region. (Historically, STEM education was subsidized by the USSR government and its military ambitions.)
I believe that the digital evangelism arose due to exceptional freedom of IT companies in those countries. While other, more traditional industries have been raided and decimated by their own corrupt governments, the IT sector remained out of reach of dirty hands.
Those circumstances gave the IT industry in the post-Soviet countries a significant advantage. It was a melting pot of new ideas, makers, universities, companies and startups.
Since then, however, the dynamics changed due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. A lot of companies already committed an exodus to other jurisdictions, while remaining companies will be forced to make it in the future.
Apologies for the unrelated comment, but as someone with origins in Belarus, I find it absolutely gutting and disheartening when people see the country’s name (in this case, on a chart), overlook it, and lump it together with some generalized notion of “Ukraine and Russia.” These are three distinct cultures, three separate nations. Sorry, I have no intention of sparking a debate or political argument, just expressing the exasperation.
I think you're all reading way too much into it. Russia and Ukraine are both in the top of both charts, the others aren't.
Belarus people are fine, the Belarus government has been horrible for a long time, it's not that surprising that people have a bad opinion of the country. And it doesn't look like it's going to get any better: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russias-quiet-...
All the people from Belarus I know fled and will never go back, they have parents and friends who've been jailed for facebook likes, family members tortured, &c.
Belarus people are fine, the Belarus government has been horrible for a long time, it's not that surprising that people have a bad opinion of the country. And it doesn't look like it's going to get any better: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russias-quiet-...
All the people from Belarus I know fled and will never go back, they have parents and friends who've been jailed for facebook likes, family members tortured, &c.
> Belarus people are fine, the Belarus government has been horrible for a long time, it's not that surprising that people have a bad opinion of the country.
I would say the same could be argued for "Russia people" as well. They didn't select their dictator either, and have no way to remove him.
I would say the same could be argued for "Russia people" as well. They didn't select their dictator either, and have no way to remove him.
> They didn't select their dictator either, and have no way to remove him.
Political power comes from the consent of the ruled. All polities have a way to remove dictators. It's not pretty and causes a lot of harm, but then so do dictators.
Political power comes from the consent of the ruled. All polities have a way to remove dictators. It's not pretty and causes a lot of harm, but then so do dictators.
That's a bit of revisionist history. Russians definitely chose Putin. Not all of them did, of course, but too many to ignore.
Just like many Italians chose Berlusconi and many Germans chose Hitler.
I feel sorry for the Russians who didn't choose this, but we shouldn't let the ones who did off the hook.
Just like many Italians chose Berlusconi and many Germans chose Hitler.
I feel sorry for the Russians who didn't choose this, but we shouldn't let the ones who did off the hook.
That's a big fallacy - Putin is a dictator. The first rule of democracy is that democracy must not kill itself to prove it exists. The same goes for Hitler and the other dictators. Democracy is not the solution but a tool. This tool is being cynically used by these criminals. Sure they get elected. But once they're in power they destroy it. They throw everything out of the window. This is not democracy. Don't fool yourself.
It's not a fallacy, and I think we agree on most points.
Russians today can't get rid of Putin through votes.
Russians in the past did vote him into power though. Because of that, they carry a part of the responsibility for what's happening today. Don't let them off the hook.
Russians today can't get rid of Putin through votes.
Russians in the past did vote him into power though. Because of that, they carry a part of the responsibility for what's happening today. Don't let them off the hook.
I mean, they do, but it involves risking your livelihood and/or life.
There's no "or" there, serious challenge to the state is a life threatening endeavour in Russia.
Slovakia and Estonia too get lumped in with Ukraine and Russia.
I assume they meant "Ukraine and Russia" as a synonym for "eastern Europe" as a whole, but it is a bit dismissive.
I assume they meant "Ukraine and Russia" as a synonym for "eastern Europe" as a whole, but it is a bit dismissive.
As an Estonian, I especially don't like being called eastern europe(ean). We're not, we're northern, according to UN geoscheme classification, according to EuroVoc, and I mean you can also just read the wikipedia page of a place to know where it is at. Furthermore, socially, culturally, and tech advancements wise, we're as far as you could possibly be from Russia association at this point.
Keep it up, if you wave your EuroVoc "NT1 Baltic States" designation harder maybe Pohjoismaiden neuvosto will give up and let you in. Or maybe not: https://satwcomic.com/party-crasher
So, what magic thing would convince you if not the UN, and if you do not respect the people who live in Estonia? I may be off base here, but you sound like a specific someone our people call vatnik. Maybe you'll only be happy if we all just call ourselves Russia.
Finland can into Nordic because it was part of Sweden for 600 years, all the rest all share a tight language family.
You on the other hand can't point to common language, have a paltry 70 years as part of a nordic country, and are literally across a sea. Nothing for it, you need to engineer a breakup of the continental plate and ship your bit across the sea my dude.
You on the other hand can't point to common language, have a paltry 70 years as part of a nordic country, and are literally across a sea. Nothing for it, you need to engineer a breakup of the continental plate and ship your bit across the sea my dude.
Nordic !== Northern. Educate yourself on the terms you use.
Dude, anyone can go and look at who are members of the Nordic council, you should try it.
Estonia maybe but I have never seen this for Slovakia
The geography data seems very amateur, to be polite.
I did similar kind of research for IndieHackers: https://www.softwaredesign.ing/blog/real-world-stats-for-boo...
that's cool thank you. any chance you will update the github repo [1] with the latest info? or any hint, how to run this thing myself. :)
[1] https://github.com/prakhar897/indiehacker-scraped
[1] https://github.com/prakhar897/indiehacker-scraped
I really like the thesis of this post: that there is a fundamental divide in tech that can be summarised as "the gamer" and the productivity-maxxing "nihilist". Here's how they describe gamers:
> In this sense, the gamer does not only include those who play video games (nor does it necessarily include all those who do). The gamer is a synecdoche; skateboarders, people who seriously play sports, interested music listeners, cinephiles, chess players, big wave surfers, and anyone else who orients their lives towards experiences that contain fun as a major ingredient are all subsumed into the persona. Casually playing a game on a subway or after a busy day to unwind doesn't by itself garner the gamer moniker, while taking paid vacation time to spend a focused 100 hours on Elden Ring does.
I think at the heart of tech, the pure hackers, and basically all great things come from these people. They are the people who take what they do seriously, and strive for perfection even where it is not utilitarian. It's how you avoid slop, and build great things...
To some extent I think the labels "gamer" and "nihilist" are overly generous. The divide is "people who love the tech" and "grifters". Creating video game is the least financially profitable venture for an expert software engineer, but (because of this) it is the most spiritually fulfilling. Every gamer knows the indie project made with love beats the billion dollar AAA project 9/10 times.
> In this sense, the gamer does not only include those who play video games (nor does it necessarily include all those who do). The gamer is a synecdoche; skateboarders, people who seriously play sports, interested music listeners, cinephiles, chess players, big wave surfers, and anyone else who orients their lives towards experiences that contain fun as a major ingredient are all subsumed into the persona. Casually playing a game on a subway or after a busy day to unwind doesn't by itself garner the gamer moniker, while taking paid vacation time to spend a focused 100 hours on Elden Ring does.
I think at the heart of tech, the pure hackers, and basically all great things come from these people. They are the people who take what they do seriously, and strive for perfection even where it is not utilitarian. It's how you avoid slop, and build great things...
To some extent I think the labels "gamer" and "nihilist" are overly generous. The divide is "people who love the tech" and "grifters". Creating video game is the least financially profitable venture for an expert software engineer, but (because of this) it is the most spiritually fulfilling. Every gamer knows the indie project made with love beats the billion dollar AAA project 9/10 times.
Many of the grifters don't know they are grifters.
There's a kind of person who dreams of making big money in marketing but imagines they can do it with no work. These divide into: (a) people who are willing to work on the product but not the marketing, and (b) people don't want to work at all.
I've found there is no way you can get through to either kind of person.
At my undergrad school we had a college radios station KTEK that had a reputation for throwing dances that nobody should up for. I ran for the "public relations officer" job because I wanted my own key so I could open the station up to do my show Saturday afternoons.
I would photocopy several hundred posters with 10-20 different designs and plaster the campus with them and that got crowds to show up. I had a great crew behind me that DJed better than I did so people had a good time and they came back and within a year we had a great reputation.
Often I've either paid or had a volunteer to do similar work and the story is that they think making one poster design and sticking up 20 of them is enough: like the customer is seeking them out that desperately. Nope, you've got to work really hard to be heard in the din and make an impression.
Thus I've got more respect for the grifter who has some hustle than the grifter who doesn't.
There's a kind of person who dreams of making big money in marketing but imagines they can do it with no work. These divide into: (a) people who are willing to work on the product but not the marketing, and (b) people don't want to work at all.
I've found there is no way you can get through to either kind of person.
At my undergrad school we had a college radios station KTEK that had a reputation for throwing dances that nobody should up for. I ran for the "public relations officer" job because I wanted my own key so I could open the station up to do my show Saturday afternoons.
I would photocopy several hundred posters with 10-20 different designs and plaster the campus with them and that got crowds to show up. I had a great crew behind me that DJed better than I did so people had a good time and they came back and within a year we had a great reputation.
Often I've either paid or had a volunteer to do similar work and the story is that they think making one poster design and sticking up 20 of them is enough: like the customer is seeking them out that desperately. Nope, you've got to work really hard to be heard in the din and make an impression.
Thus I've got more respect for the grifter who has some hustle than the grifter who doesn't.
This does make sense to me but thinking about my own experience playing games there is definitely some component of playing them to feel busy as well. Depending on the kind of games you enjoy, you might turn to them precisely because you feel productive accomplishing a sort of endless cycle of goals. You mine to craft and you craft to mine. On some level I know that this is wasted time, but at the same time who plays games where it feels like they arent accomplishing anything? I don't know how to reconcile the differences between the archetypes explained here especially because it does seem like gamers often lead trends tech (never forget why gpus are as good as they are).
Okay also want to point out that slack started as a video game and more specifically a means of communication for a video game company which is kinda funny and maybe reflects the point of this article.
Okay also want to point out that slack started as a video game and more specifically a means of communication for a video game company which is kinda funny and maybe reflects the point of this article.
ProductHunt has over 300k products [0], why only look at 76k (25%) of them?
[0] Source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41708837
[0] Source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41708837
I wonder how they got the data. it says:
"I found a publicly available list of all ProductHunt users, launches, upvotes, and comments."
but perplexity or google search didn't help me
but perplexity or google search didn't help me
Kaggle dataset with over 300k posts:
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/alanhamlett/producthunt-user...
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/alanhamlett/producthunt-user...
You can get it from Kaggle, but it looks like the dataset there contains only 10K products
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/undefinenull/product-hunt
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"Whether this represents the actual number of products released on Product Hunt throughout this period is difficult to determine. The products and user data that appears in this analysis is based solely on the Product Hunt sitemap, and anecdotal experience indicates that not every product gets indexed there. But given the general smoothness of the curve, and the overall number of the products here (more than 70,000), it's as large a sample as one is liable to get."
maybe off topic, but I never got the gist of Product Hunt.
Isn't it solutionism? Who goes in search of products to try out?
I only see the appeal from builders that want inspiration or people who want to network, usually neither makes for a good user.
Are there people who go to product hunt when they have a problem and want a solution? Or people who have excess budget and look around to see where they can spend their money?
Isn't it solutionism? Who goes in search of products to try out?
I only see the appeal from builders that want inspiration or people who want to network, usually neither makes for a good user.
Are there people who go to product hunt when they have a problem and want a solution? Or people who have excess budget and look around to see where they can spend their money?
I used to visit it occasionally, mostly just to catch up on what people were building and maybe find something interesting every now and then. It was kind of like what StumbleUpon was back in the day, just random exploration of things people made. I almost never signed up for any product, though.
Back before PH was sold, I was on it every day. Between the acquisition, crypto project astroturfing, and AI hellscape; it's now pretty meaningless.
People have the delusion that they can launch a product there. I mean, you can, but you still have to do the 99% of the work it takes to get your product in front of the person who wants it.
Some complementary analysis of the same dataset where I look into how the top categories trend over time, what an AI product was before 2022 and who the most successful makers are:
https://test.getdot.ai/share/78626655-b57b-4f90-a730-0af80c0...
https://test.getdot.ai/share/78626655-b57b-4f90-a730-0af80c0...
The reason people keep switching productivity tools is because they're trying to find one that doesn't suck.
This went much deeper than anticipated, but I just found it curious how there's no data for Brazil? We have a big and active community on Product Hunt, it surprised me it wasn't even mentioned the rankings.
I can’t scroll on iOS safari.
The site appears to implement a custom scrollbar with the Vuescroll package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/vuescroll
Which is nuts for a simple article page like this (and almost any other use case really). Just leave the native components as they are, especially scrolling.
Which is nuts for a simple article page like this (and almost any other use case really). Just leave the native components as they are, especially scrolling.
Firefox on macOS is also completely borked. At least with my freescrolling Logitech Master MX 2. I'll scroll and it will jump the expected amount, I'll scroll some more and it will jump about 4-5x what I expect, and then I'll scroll some more and it will go backward in the page. The site is pretty much unusable for me.
scrolling also broken on firefox.
ridiculous.
ridiculous.
iOS Safari seems to be behind in terms of scrollbar styling
https://caniuse.com/?search=scrollbar
It appears to be using a custom JS-based scrollbar. Which is just crazy.
I would just kill the scrollbar styling if it’s breaking the site in common browsers. Styling the scrollbar is absolutely a nice-to-have—more important to have people able to read the content. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Firefox on Linux also doesn't work.
Yes it does. It just takes a while to load. No idea why this is though.
Rule 1 of web development, don’t reinvent and mess with scrolling.
And if you really need to, don't anyway.
Firefox on Android - works.
By ending in 2021 at least he will be missing the ten million SaaS starter kits created in 2023-2024.
SaaS starter kits are the MLM of programmers.
SaaS starter kits are the MLM of programmers.
I needed a SaaS starter kit in 2015 and it was nowhere to be found! (e.g. the API economy was full of startups that offered 99 features I didn't need but didn't offer the 1 feature I needed to have a business which is a way to make people pay for it)
There will never be a starter kit for you when you need it - Einstein's Theory of Relativity or something
Despite the posted title, this article is really about productivity apps and the people who use them. For each new app, they hope that this one will finally be the one that magically makes them "productive" where all the previous ones have failed. It then goes on to speculate on why they would do so and subsequently veers off into tangents on bullshit jobs, the role of middle managers in startups and (through a somewhat tortured metaphor of gaming as self-actualization) the role of leisure in the modern economy.
Fun article but not really about product hunt after the first few paragraphs.