Ryan Hoover, den 28 år gamle grunnleggeren av produktanbefalings-nettstedet Product Hunt, støttet seg tungt på sosiale medier og blogging for å få koblet seg på oppstartscenen. “Jeg gjorde ikke noe av dette på en strategisk måte,” forteller han. “Jeg hater ordet nettverk fordi det føles kaldt og transaksjonsaktig. Jeg blogget fordi jeg likte det og jeg lærte masse. Heldigvis lønte det seg for Product Hunt.” Til tross for sin motstand mot ordet, har Hoover – ironisk nok – det nettverket i Silicon Valley som alle ønsker å være i del av.
Product Hunt er en online plattform for å anbefale produkter, spill og mye mer, og er nå allment ansett å være stedet for å oppdage den neste store tingen innenfor tech. Nettstedet kurerer stort sett ukjente produkter og startups, og lar medlemmer stemme på, kommentere og diskutere sine favoritter. Resultatet er et nettsted med mer enn $7 millioner i finansiering, som gir gründere en annen måte å bli oppdaget på og finne venture-backing. Product Hunt sin raske vekst i popularitet har ført til tilsvarende økning av Hoovers eget omdømme.
“Jeg ønsket en enkel måte å dele produkter med andre mennesker på.
Hoover har en svært reflektert holdning til både nettverksbygging og gründerskap som vi gjerne vil dele.
Økonomiredaktør i LinkedIn, Caroline Fairchild gjorde nylig et intervju med Ryan Hoover. Her følger deler av intervjuet:
Caroline Fairchild: What was your initial inspiration for Product Hunt?
Ryan Hoover: Product Hunt started as a simple idea. I wanted an easy way to share products with other people. It is something we do all the time the way we talk about whether we watched Game of Thrones that week or the Warriors game that day. But when it comes to product, there was no place online for those conversations. Or there is, but it is bifurcated across all these different channels. An email was the easiest way to start. I’m not an engineer and email is actually really easy from an engagement perspective: It is easy to consume and it is already a part of your daily routine. I figured, let’s create an email list. So we did that, and then built the website from there.
CF: How did you build an audience for yourself before Product Hunt was even formed?
RH: A lot of successful companies started with someone who had an audience or a network to start off with. For me, it was tweeting and blogging and all that stuff, but it was also putting together brunches with ten founders because I like to bring together cool people. I also answer people’s emails and am really personable. Doing that consistently over time, you start to build relationships with people. Some of them are very distant: You are on Twitter and you email back and forth. Others are closer with people in San Francisco that I see frequently. I also used to read a lot of blogs and posts from other founders. I would read a lot and share a lot and tag those people. It wouldn’t be just a headline with a tag. It would be something that either demonstrated that I read it or added my own perspective. Otherwise you look like a bot. By doing that consistently with this relatively small world of startups, people start to recognize you. Then people start tweeting at you and tweets turn to direct messages which turn into in-person meetings.
CF: Why do you think traditional networking is perceived to be so transactional?
RH: Part of it is this perception that you have to hustle yourself into getting investment. They think they have to be really persistent. The truth is, yes you do need to be really persistent sometimes, but the better way of going about it is thinking super long term by building those relationships before you even have a product to sell. Also, thinking about helping people in some way. That can be as small as introducing them to someone to reading their blog post and sharing it. I think a lot of people come into this world and they have a product and they pitch it. Sometimes that isn’t the right way.
CF: Was there a moment when you knew Product Hunt was going to be huge?
RH: We turned the email into a website a month after it started. It had organic and natural growth while we were still working on it as a side project. After three or four months, I had to decide what I was going to do with it. I didn’t see any startups I wanted to join either. A lot of it was thinking to myself, ‘Do I want to work on this idea for 10 years?’ That’s a question you have to ask yourself before you take any money. You can’t just give it back. When you take a job you can quit. For me, I can’t really do that. I have a lot of people that are dependent on me. I also asked myself what Product Hunt could become in the long term. I had an answer for that, so I felt like I could check that box as well. I joined Y Combinator to try and raise money so we could bring people on and build a team.
CF: How are you thinking about scaling your business?
RH: My job is to hire myself out of a job in some ways, which is weird. I am frankly learning. I have never managed a team before now, so I am learning a lot about that. My personality is very hands on and I want to do everything and I am learning more and more to let go. To do that, I need to make sure we have the right people that I trust. It is about building a solid team that I trust and respect and also making sure that the culture is moving in the right direction. Also, my background is in product, but over time I need to do less of things like writing the copy on the website so I can focus on longer term goals. That shift from the day to day stuff is going to be a transition for the next six months to a year for me.
CF: What is your big vision for Product Hunt?
RH: When we looked at Product Hunt in the beginning, we realized we had this nice niche capturing the tech community and this nice feed of tech products being curated and sourced. There is a greater and greater need for a service like that. If you look at almost any product category, there is more and more being created. There are more books being self-published. Games are exploding thanks to new distribution channels. News is blowing up because everyone is writing. Music as well. There is so much that is being created. People love these categories as well. I love music and am geeking out on new music every day. Some people love books and they will read three a week. I have a friend who loves photography and goes and takes pictures of the moon. There is huge creation happening, there is a huge audience that loves to find the best of that category. So this model of community I think can scale to anything. The idea is how do we take what we learned in tech and then apply it to these other categories over time.
