Product Hunt

Product Hunt is an online platform for users to share and discover new technology products. The company was established in November 2013 by Ryan Hoover, who initially launched it as an email list created with Linkydink. Growing up with entrepreneurial parents, Hoover's early experiences in business, including selling items on eBay and working in his family's video game store, shaped his approach to identifying and filling market needs. His career in product management within the gaming industry eventually led him to San Francisco, where the idea for a centralized discovery platform for tech products was born out of conversations with friends.

The platform functions as a community-driven curation and discussion forum. Users submit new products—spanning web apps, mobile apps, hardware, games, books, and podcasts—which are then listed daily. A voting and commenting system, akin to Reddit or Hacker News, allows the community to upvote their favorites, causing the most popular products to rise to the top of the daily list. The primary audience consists of product enthusiasts, developers, entrepreneurs, and investors who use the site as a launchpad for new ventures and a hunting ground for investment opportunities.

Product Hunt's business model is multifaceted, generating revenue from several streams. It offers premium placement for products through sponsored listings and promotes jobs for a fee, leveraging its community of tech professionals. The company also earns income through advertising, affiliate marketing partnerships, and a subscription service called Founder Club, which provides startups with access to exclusive service discounts. Additionally, it launched "Ship," a suite of tools for makers to generate demand and communicate with their audience, operating on a freemium SaaS model. After participating in Y Combinator's Summer 2014 batch, Product Hunt secured $6.1 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. In November 2016, AngelList acquired the company for a reported $20 million, a move intended to create a comprehensive destination for startups to launch products, recruit talent, and raise funds.

Keywords: product discovery, tech community, startup launch platform, Ryan Hoover, new products, tech creations, daily leaderboard, product upvoting, maker community, AngelList, Y Combinator, sponsored listings, SaaS tools, developer community, entrepreneur resources, tech trends, app discovery, hardware discovery, startup ecosystem, product feedback