60 Second Thank You

A few weeks ago Clément Vouillon from SaaS Club, sent me this heart-warming email:

Hi Ryan,

I’m @clemnt on Twitter, you’ve kindly proposed to feature SaaS Club on Product Hunt this week end! Just wanted to write you a little email with the results;

In one word: amazing!

Basically I was featured by Maxime saturday morning and from saturday until yesterday night 1008 people registered. Which is huge for me!

However it’s hard to tell exactly how many of them came directly from Product Hunt since quickly after I got “Hunted” somebody from the community shared SaaS Club on HN where we got 150 upvotes and spent some time on the home.

That said:

• I got at least +400 direct registrations from PH
• The 600 after I cannot be sure what is the % between HN and PH but it’s still awesome
• I still consider that the +1000 were generated by PH since the HN post came from here. So in my view PH accounts for 100% of them: direct and indirect subscribers
• From a qualitative POV I’ve received only positive feedback

Thanks again Ryan and keep up the good work!

Smiling, I responded:

Clement,

You’ve put the biggest smile on my face this morning.

Products are often an offline, water cooler topic but there was no online community to geek out about products with smart folks. I wanted Product Hunt to exist for myself and I think we’ve achieved that initial goal. But the site and community has surpassed my initial selfish motivations to help startups and people like yourself, get early, deserved attention. I love it.

Glad to hear the people liked it and thanks for jumping into the discussion. :)

This isn’t just a self-promotional piece for Product Hunt. I share this conversation to express two things:

1. It’s incredibly motivating to work on something that genuinely helps people in their personal or professional lives. Beyond altruism, it encourages founders to preserver when things get hard. Nir Eyal has a fantastic piece on the morality of manipulation that everyone should read before starting or joining their next venture.
2. Small acts of appreciation can make someone’s day. We all use products that improve our lives in small and significant ways. Why not express your appreciation? Consider emailing or tweeting to the founders with your thanks.

Let’s have some fun and make a few people smile. Take 60 seconds to do this now:

1. Look at your phone’s homescreen.
2. Choose an app you love.
3. Search for the founder on Twitter. If they’re not on Twitter or too difficult to find, search for the company.
4. Tweet your appreciation and love of the product. The more personal and specific the better.
5. Feel good – you just made someone smile. :)

Feel free to subscribe to my essays or say hi on Twitter (@rrhoover).

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