20 VC FF 026: Ryan Hoover, Founder @ ProductHunt on Relationship Building, Habit Forming and The Vision for ProductHunt

Ryan Hoover is the Founder and CEO @ ProductHunt, winner of TechCrunch "Best New Startup 2014". ProductHunt is a community of people sharing, upvoting, and geeking out about new technology products, games, and books. Before Product Hunt, Ryan was an EIR at Tradecraft and Director of Product at PlayHaven. As a writer, Ryan has contributed to Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal and written many essays, including features for TechCrunch, Forbes, Pando, Fast Company, and The Next Web. He writes about startup trends, product designs, and production growth on his blog, ryanhoover.me. I would like to thank Mattermark for providing all the data and analysis for this interview and you can check them out here! CLICK TO PLAY In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did ProductHunt get started and what was the a-ha moment for Ryan in the founding of ProductHunt? 2.) PH has gone from a newsletter to friends to a a16z backed startup with employees around the globe. What have been the drivers of PH's success? 3.) PH harness the crowd for feedback on everything from designs to features. Why does Ryan prefer this open sourced feedback approach? What are the benefits? What would Ryan suggest to founders looking to adopt a similar feedback style? 4.) Question from Matt Hartman at Betaworks: Considering Ryan's work with Nir Eyal on Hooked, are there elements of Hooked that Ryan baked into the infrastructure of PH and what were they? 5.) How has Ryan created such a close and intimate relationship with his audience? What are the tools and strategies that Ryan uses to build that community? What advice does Ryan give for people looking to network and make a community around them? 6.) Where does Ryan see PH in 5 years time? What is his vision for the PH platform? How does a platform such as ProductHunt plan to monetise? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Ryan's Fave Book: The Art of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses Ryan's Fave Podcasts: TWIST by Jason Calacanis, Startup: Gimlet Media, Mystery Show: Gimlet Media As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ryan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  Hello and welcome to the 20 Minute VC and Founder's Friday with your host Harry Stebbings. Now, I'm so excited to welcome today's founder. He is a friend and a massively rising star in the industry. It is, of course, Ryan Hoover, founder and CEO at Product Hunt, one of my favourite sites, which I'm without a doubt on every single day. I'm most definitely not the only one, as it has seen phenomenal growth and won 2014's Best New Startup at TechCrunch's awards, and they've raised investment from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, BetaWorks and many more incredible investors. And Ryan himself is an absolute legend and obviously has an immense talent and eye for product.

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  But I also always regard Ryan as being the best community builder and most engaged founder there is. He's constantly on Twitter and constantly engaging with his audience, and you can see for yourself by following him on Twitter @RRHoover. And I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Mattermark today for providing all the data and analysis for today's episode, and you can check them out at www.mattermark.com. They really are awesome. Also, if you're ever light on startup and VC reading material, you must follow Mattermark's @thinker for all the latest startup and VC news. But before we dive into the show today, for all startup founders and entrepreneurs looking

• 1:22Harry Stebbings?

  for legal assistance, you must check out 500 Startups Company Law Trades, which provides a marketplace of awesome business attorneys with strong domain experience with startups, and they've helped startups from top accelerators like YC, Techstars and of course 500 Startups. And check out the show notes to book a free legal strategy with them, or simply head over to www.lawtrades.com to find out more information. But now it's time to bring the man himself to centre stage. It is such a pleasure to welcome friend and legend Ryan Hoover, CEO and founder at Product Hunt.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Ryan, welcome to the 20 minute VC. It's so awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me, Harry.

• 2:18Harry Stebbings?

  Now, can you get the ball rolling today by telling us a little backstory and how you got started with Product Hunt? And what the kind of aha moment was for you?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's actually been almost two years now. The anniversary is coming up soon. And so, yeah, Product Hunt started while I was kind of exploring new opportunities. I was at this other startup and I was there for about three years. It's why I moved to San Francisco. Went from 10 people to 100. And long story short, we grew, grew and, you know, things changed a little bit. I got a little bit less passionate about what we were building. I wanted to do something of my own and kind of move into the consumer space and build something ultimately for myself. And so I decided to leave and during that kind of transition, I just had some ideas. And one of them was this thing that for some reason I called it Product Hunt. I don't really know where the name came from exactly, but, you know, I thought, okay, I like new products.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I like talking about them. Oftentimes my conversations are really revolving around new mobile apps or new websites. And, you know, I wanted a place where me and my friends could just share these things that we find every single day. And so that's where it started. I named it Product Hunt. I created an email list. And then just submitted it on Quiv, tweeted it out and got some subscribers and some contributors. And then it went from there.

• 3:33Harry Stebbings?

  So when you look back then now, Product Hunt's gone from a newsletter to friends and some people on Twitter, say, to a venture-backed startup with employees around the globe. So what do you think has been the kind of key drivers to the success of the platform?

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I guess it all starts from the very beginning, I guess, in that. To make a community work, to build something like this, you need, you need to really focus on the people in the beginning and, and do a lot of frankly, manual like labor, manual things to get it going. And in the very, very beginning, uh, you know, I emailed some friends of mine, some people that I knew and had built a relationship with over the years. A lot of them were founders or investors themselves and, and super connected in the startup space. And I emailed them and said, hey, I'm working on this new thing. Um, it's just a fun side project. Check it out. Submit some products here if you find them and, and I'd appreciate it. And, and they listened to me because they knew me. And then over time, we started expanding and, and we had more people sign up.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  And I would do things like emailing the, the people that signed up and said, hey, welcome. Uh, and I would actually, these would all be a hundred percent personal emails. Like I would

• 4:40Harry Stebbings?

  Wow.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Look at their Twitter profile and say, oh, they, they worked there. And so I'd have some sort of context around who they were and, and actually it led to a lot of interesting conversations. And in some cases, like relationships that, that carried through long-term. And so just a lot of little things like that, uh, tweeting at people and saying, hey, your product's on Product Hunt. Check it out. Oftentimes people are like, oh, that's cool. Uh, you know, people are talking about this thing I made. That's, that's rad. Let me join. And I did, did a lot of that, um, when I had no one really on the community side helping. It was just me doing that. And we've carried through a lot of the, that kind of personal touch and that community kind of vibe, um, as we've scaled and grown. And that's just core is like, when you build a community, you have to not only seed it with the right kind of culture that you want,

• 5:26Speaker 02

  but then you have to make sure it grows and you have to keep growing. Otherwise it, it just dies. A lot of communities start, but they, they don't grow and then they just kind of fizzle out.

• 5:35Harry Stebbings?

  And it's very funny that you've got on to kind of people and communities very quickly because I, I asked Matt Hartman at BetaWrist and then Kevin Carter, obviously, SV Angel, uh, and quite a few other people in the industry, you know, what should I be asking Ryan in the interview? And everyone said how much people love you and, and how you're amazing at community building. So talking of people then and relationships, you harness the crowd for feedback on, on everything now at Product Hunt really. From designs to features and openly share your plans and, and versions. So why firstly, why do you prefer this, uh, open sourced feedback approach? What are the benefits to getting the crowd involved?

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, for us, since the the core of Product Hunt is the community and the people that use it, if if you know, the technology behind it, it's it's not the most sophisticated. You know, the first version was uh really a Ruby on Rails app that Nathan, my my buddy, he built it over like a five day Thanksgiving holiday. And and that's really the core of of what Product Hunt is like. It's definitely grown and we've added a lot of things, but the core of that is still the same. So it's not the technology really that that makes Product Hunt work. It's really the people that use it and come back every single day. And so that's that's why kind of building in public and sharing designs we're working on and getting feedback out in the open is super important because, one, we want to understand what are we missing?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  We're so heads down on designs and and we're also like super power users of Product Hunt that, you know, we need feedback from people who aren't necessarily. We also need people to tell us what we're missing. And so getting that feedback early on before we've even built something has been super valuable. Um, we we recently shared a a mockup of our new homepage that we're working on and and we had hundreds and hundreds of comments within the first day from people just submitting their ideas and and things they didn't understand. And that's helped us now refine it as we're actually building it out uh as we're speaking right now. And so that's really important. The other piece is that with communities, you've seen this happen before where you change something drastically or even something relatively small and people get immediately upset.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  It's like it's communities are kind of like a home. And when you move the furniture around, whether it's better or not, people are like, whoa, you moved the furniture, why didn't you ask me? And so a lot of times, that's that's one of the reasons. We want to get that feedback from people, also kind of acclimate people to understand, okay, this is the direction we're heading and here's why, like, here's why we're changing this. It's not just, it's not, we're not just changing it for the sake of it, but we have a a goal in mind. And so it's been incredibly valuable. Um, we recently actually did a private beta, which is in progress with uh about a couple thousand people. And they're all using the new homepage. It's still not a hundred percent there, but we're using the new homepage and we have a Slack group. And uh it's been really, really fun.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Uh, it's been amazing to see the the the level of excitement and and and feedback that we've gotten so far.

• 8:34Harry Stebbings?

  And what would you suggest then to founders who maybe are looking to adopt a similar model? Is there anything they should be wary of or or, you know, should they not get upset if they get negative feedback? What what is it that you would suggest to them?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  You know, it's it's eh for those that have done user testing, we did some yesterday on the new homepage. User testing is the most, one of the most insightful things, but also painful things to watch. Because you see them using this thing that you spent all this time building and you're like, this is beautiful. I've built a masterpiece and then they they look at it and they're like, what the hell is this? I don't understand. It's super painful. But what you have to realize is also that, again, you're you're super heads down. You know everything about the product as a creator of it and these are the people are looking at it for the first time. So you have to come come in with that context and then also be um let go of ego. I, you know, I sometimes I struggle with this because, you know, I I like to think that I have good ideas.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  But I also am self-aware enough that my ideas aren't always correct. So you, as a creator, have to like be open to feedback and be honest and be empathetic in in their feedback. Um now, that all said, just because we ask for feedback and people tell us things doesn't mean we're gonna listen. We're not gonna, I mean, we're not gonna change it be because of the feedback they gave us. Like, we're gonna look for patterns and we're gonna make changes. But there will inevitably be people that say, oh, like, this button shouldn't be here. And we're not gonna move it just because they say this button shouldn't be here. Like, not all the feedback is something that you should actually take action on, of course.

• 10:05Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, and you said there about kind of the beta, being open to kind of a few thousand people then. And and that kind of leads to a question in terms of a lot of people kind of maybe a concern that Product Hunt is fantastic for the early adopters, uh which it is absolutely. But how do you plan to transition that from early adopters then to the mass market?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh that's it's a great question. And that's also the lens that we're taking all of this feedback in eh in with. Like, the the people that are eager enough to participate in Slack and and give us feedback and become part of the like the beta community, they're also the more engaged hardcore users of Product Hunt.

• 10:47Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  And their their feedback is incredibly important, but it's also not going to be representative of the other subset of people who don't even know what Product Hunt is.

• 10:55Harry Stebbings?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  And so there are inevitably going to be some people who may not like some of the changes we make. And I'm confident that we'll we'll find the right balance in building an experience where it's open to. You know, these other people that like other things. That's that's really the the whole purpose of the front page redesign. What we're doing is surfacing more types of content, different types of content that other people also love, like everyone. I I think most people in product, they love technology, but a lot of people also love books and a lot of them love podcasts and they love games.

• 11:27Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, the new podcast session is fantastic, by the way. Absolutely love that.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Thanks. Yeah, it's been awesome to see you engage in it and um I'm really excited about it. The the problem right now that we're trying to solve is. Podcast is kind of buried within a sub menu. There's no reason why podcast shouldn't be on the homepage, a place where you can just click. One button to start listening to this podcast, for example.

• 11:47Harry Stebbings?

  I've also found so many new podcasts because they're done by episode. See, I would have never have found, you know, certain. Podcasts because they're all under just kind of Ryan Hoover's product, I would say. But then I find, you know. Peter Diamandis, uh and I listen to that and it's amazing. Do you know what I mean?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:04Harry Stebbings?

  It's categorized by episode. It's so different from anyone else.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Exactly. I'm actually seeing my, I'm a big podcast listener and I'm seeing some of my behavior. Change a little bit where I I subscribe to about six or seven podcasts and I listen to them. All the time, but there's so many more podcasts out there that is like almost this barrier of, okay, I gotta invest time to go explore and find shows and then subscribe.

• 12:26Harry Stebbings?

  If you could pick three of them, which would they be? I'd love to hear.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  The three that I listen to, um, a lot of mine are really focused on startups and that kind of thing. So I'm actually. Excited to explore non-startup, non-technology podcasts, but. A few that I love are This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis.

• 12:43Harry Stebbings?

  Love Jason, yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Yes, I love the Gimlet guys, their um startup show is fantastic. And then the third one is probably Mystery Show. Have you listened to that?

• 12:54Harry Stebbings?

  It's it's that kind of spin off, isn't it? It's like Reply All, but it's it's still uh Gimlet Media, am I right?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's still by Gimlet Media.

• 13:02Harry Stebbings?

  Is it good? I I haven't actually listened to it yet.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  It's it's good. Start with the Jake Gyllenhaal episode. It's it's ridiculous. It's the whole series, the whole show is about solving really mundane, kind of uh unimportant mysteries. And the Jake Gyllenhaal episode is, is Jake Gyllenhaal six foot tall? That's that's the question they're trying to answer. And it's good.

• 13:24Harry Stebbings?

  And Ryan listened to it for half an hour, captivated.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:29Harry Stebbings?

  Uh, and moving back to to Product Hunt and the community uh now. Uh, we've got a question from Matt Hartman, actually. He he, you managed to ask him a question in his interview, so he wanted to turn the tables on you now.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 13:44Harry Stebbings?

  When looking at Product Hunt, it's an incredibly habit-forming product. And we know you worked with Nir Eyal with Hooked. So are there elements of Hooked that you deliberately baked into the infrastructure of Product Hunt? If so, what were they?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So there's a number of different kind of user flows and and and things baked into that that take note from from Hooked and and what Nir's written about a ton. And at its core, the the habit, uh, the loop that we're really trying to to reinforce is, you know, there's a trigger. And in this case, I'll go through an example. So there's a trigger which, for us, there's the email digest, which hundreds of thousands of people subscribe to. And when they get this email digest, the action that we're trying to get them to take is open it and click on it, click on something there. And the reward for doing so, the whole reason why they do that is to find something interesting or inspiring or

• 14:39Speaker 02

  or something they might might want to use or download or purchase. And so the way we've kind of built the email is, you know, we we incorporate some variability, like you don't know exactly what's going to be in the email. There's some consistency in that it's like yesterday's top products, but we also surface a different collection that that's different every single day.

• 14:57Harry Stebbings?

  I always find the collection titles really grabbing. I always open them manically when I see kind of like great habits to start the morning with.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's that's our goal really is, you know, it's it's hopefully that's the trigger is that subject line really. And to get to the next step, we need to instill enough curiosity and make it easy enough to open, which. What's great about email is it's part of a lot of people's daily habit. It's something they they look at every single day. And if people give us permission to email them, then we become part of that daily routine. And then the other kind of component, the last piece of that that flow entirely is is the reward is okay, you open up the email. And then you navigate to, let's say, a collection and and we've added some different hooks where you can follow collections now. So one of the the triggers is that follow button. The action is clicking that follow button. The reward is, oh, goodie, I'm gonna get updates when this emoji apps collection.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  You know, and more emoji apps that I love are gonna be posted. And and then we now get permission to email you and notify you when, you know, a new emoji app is is surfaced in that collection. So. There's a lot of different kind of loops that that we're hoping to reinforce to encourage people to come back and keep using Product Hunt.

• 16:08Harry Stebbings?

  And do you have any favorite collections that you'd recommend we all go and follow?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Oh, so if you go to producthunt.com slash collections, you'll see a number of featured collections there. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of diversity in.

• 16:21Harry Stebbings?

  A lot of really good ones.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's what I love what Russ has been creating a lot of games collections and um one of my favorites is uh games you can play in your browser. Simply because they're usually like super lightweight games you can click on, play in your browser. Without having to download your iPhone and all that kind of stuff. Um and a lot of them are just ridiculous, like Breakouts, which is like this breakout spin off. Um I won't try and describe it here because you just have to check it out. It's ridiculous. And, you know, we've also seen like Corley uh created uh female founders collection, which is. Um really interesting and shared heavily, like it's just a collection of of products and and startups built by by women entrepreneurs.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  We've seen a number of others from uh Julie created this one called Bake Night, which is a bunch of products for basically stoners. A very cleverly named.

• 17:13Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, we we can't be uh can't be using that in London, I'm afraid, but is is is weed legal in uh California?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Um it is if you have a a medical marijuana card, I believe it is, um but it's. The US is changing a bit and some states is completely legal now.

• 17:29Harry Stebbings?

  Do you have a medical marijuana card?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  I do not.

• 17:32Harry Stebbings?

  Oh, no grokoma, damn it.

• 17:37Harry Stebbings?

  Um, okay, and then, and then, you know, when I spoke to Matt, he said, you know, one of the reasons that Beta Works found you. So Beta Works found you was you kept popping up on their social media engagement charts. And, and everyone knows you and feels like they have a really close relationship to you. Is that mostly achieved then through Twitter and Facebook?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, less on Facebook, I would say, and, and mostly on Twitter, frankly. I've been using Twitter for several years. It's probably one of the most important products in my life. Um, actually, without Twitter, I don't, I don't even know where I'd be, which is kind of a weird statement to make, but it's, it's such a serendipity machine. Um, and has allowed me to meet a lot of people and, and of course, it's been um, critical for Product Hunt. In that it's, it's a place where I can contact just about anyone and personally communicate with them and, and it's um. Yeah, it's just something that I find a lot of value in and by just regularly using uh, Twitter, not only like sharing things, but like actively engaging and. Joining discussion in some way has been helpful.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Uh, before Product Hunt, I used to read a lot of blogs, actually, and a lot of articles, and I would get into a habit of sharing all the, the articles that I found useful. And one small, small difference that most people don't do is they usually share articles, but they rarely tag the author. And so just one small thing, I'd share like maybe ten articles a day and I would always tag the author just to give them a hat tip and be like, hey, I'm like, I like what you added. And what you wrote. And I would also not just tweet the, the title itself, but it would be something, some sort of context, like my take on it in some way. And so. Like doing that for a couple of years, three years uh, on Twitter allows you to actually build these connections that are, are authentic between people.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  And those authors who many of them are in startups and some of them well-known, they start to recognize you and, and start to building up that kind of um. That relationship and that connection. So, yeah, a lot of it's just been on Twitter and then, um, you know, another piece of it is just being. Just I hope like authentic and also just having fun with with Twitter and and things like not being super serious.

• 19:42Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  I think a lot of people come off, whether it's through email or Twitter or whatnot, they come off too robotic in some ways and. You know, I I've met a lot of people who come off actually very personable and and funny and and, you know, they're. They might be like talking in a professional context, but it's actually like very personable and lighthearted. And that's that's kind of what I try to uh exude.

• 20:03Harry Stebbings?

  And then talking of Twitter there, you are a CEO now yourself, you know of the demands and the strains, um. What do you think of Jack Dorsey being CEO of two publicly traded companies soon to be? Do you think it will be a struggle? Do you think he'll be able to do it? What are your thoughts?

• 20:21Speaker 02

  You know, I was I was very surprised to to hear that he's going to maintain a CEO role in both companies. I. Don't know how he can do it. Um, I I don't know. I just don't know how uh anyone can run two companies, especially two massive. Prominent companies um as as a single person. So I don't know, I'm I'm not. Here to judge him and and his ability to do so because I I don't actually know Jack um outside of his. Like public persona and everything, and I don't know the inner workings of either company, but. You know, it's pretty audacious to be able to to do that uh at the same time.

• 20:53Harry Stebbings?

  Last person was Steve Jobs, wasn't it, with Pixar and Apple? Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:58Harry Stebbings?

  And and then do you have any advice then for people looking to build that network around them? Uh so we've got tagging authors. Uh Twitter, we say, is the main tool for creating that network. Any other tips then to make connections on Twitter?

• 21:11Speaker 02

  On Twitter specifically, I think it's a lot of it is just engaging, actively participating, um. You know, being authentic and real and adding value to the conversation. Rather than, you know, going back to what I said before, just tweeting out. The title of a a post, you know, and maybe even tagging author then is, that's fine, like they appreciate it, but, you know. People want to see your personality and your take on things and uh they'll start gravitating towards that over time.

• 21:37Harry Stebbings?

  And then outside of Twitter, in terms of kind of creating that network around you.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I also used to do uh like brunches every now and then, not all that often, but small brunches with, you know, six to ten people. A lot of them, people in in entrepreneurship or startups or or whatnot. And um and those have been fantastic, cause it's it's a great way to build a really small but like very intimate. Relationship in some ways with people and also give other people opportunities to meet other cool people. And I think that's that's something that very few people actually do is is create meetups or brunches or other things like that. To to build just those relationships personally, but also amongst other people within an industry.

• 22:20Harry Stebbings?

  And I'd love to go back to Product Hunt itself now and and talk a bit about business and. How does a platform such as Product Hunt plan to monetize? I mean, what do you think are the options open to you?

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it's at its core, people come to Product Hunt to. Download, use, sometimes purchase products and so. Uh at scale, uh confident that we'll find ways to generate revenue out of that, cause the intent to actually do those things is is there. So for right now, we're not focusing on monetization at all, but over time at some point, you know, we'll we'll start exploring that more.

• 22:57Harry Stebbings?

  And then in terms of the fundraising process, how was that for you as the founder?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was it was my first time and it was um it was very different than I think most situations. We had. You know, for a long time, Product Hunt was a side project and, you know, I was working on it on the side, it was growing. Um, you know, leading into to the Y C interview, we're growing fifty percent month over month. And that's, you know, when you have traction and you have like a big vision and and you have a a big market opportunity. Like all of those things combined makes fundraising a lot easier than if you just have an idea on paper. And so because I spent all this time as a side project and I was fortunate enough not to have to worry about money. Cause I was making a little bit enough to to cover my rent in San Francisco, um I could just keep doing this.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, which which is quite a lot. Um I wasn't banking anything, but at least I was covering my rent and uh. Yeah, so just just having that opportunity to take that time to build it up, to prove that people actually wanted this thing. That's what made fundraising a lot easier in in that, you know, investors started approaching me. Before I never actually approached investors in the beginning, it was actually the the opposite. And so that was that was really fortunate for us. The other thing that that I would say is we we were a little bit lucky in that we we built a product that investors use. And so, you know, the first step of raising money is first getting on people's radar. So we we inherently just captured that because people were were already using it.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  These investors that that, you know, like Matt, for example, he was a super early user, Matt at Bay Works.

• 24:32Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  And and when we started, when I started talking to him, like, he already understood the value of it. And he he was a user and consumed it daily himself.

• 24:41Harry Stebbings?

  I'm thinking to a huge amount of VCs who use it as that kind of primary deal sourcing tool.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's and so that's kind of a an unfair advantage that we just have when it comes to the fundraising process.

• 24:52Harry Stebbings?

  Now, are you ready for the quickfire round?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Okay, go for it.

• 24:56Harry Stebbings?

  So your most read blog or newsletter?

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Oh, so I used to read all the time. Um, I'm gonna cheat and I'm gonna say, well, the honest truth is Twitter is my newsfeed. But before I I got extremely busy, I was very active on Quib. Which is a community of people sharing a lot of entrepreneurial related articles and it's just a really good community, great content.

• 25:17Harry Stebbings?

  Awesome. And then career highlights so far, obviously you're very young and there's gonna be many, many more, but so far, what's it been for you?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  One of the the biggest moments so far has been, I was walking, this was maybe a year and a half ago, so really, really early in Product Hunt. I walked into a Phil's and I overheard these these two guys talking about Product Hunt and said, oh, our product was on Product Hunt, it was amazing. And I was just listening to them and that was the first time I've heard someone in real life, you know, talk about Product Hunt that wasn't directly talking to me. And that was like one of those moments where you get chills and you're like, holy shit, like, people use this, like, that's amazing.

• 25:55Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, absolutely. What about the crunchies? Cause then you win startup of the year, young startup of the year or breakout startup of the year.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that was, that was really fun. It was actually my first Crunchies and, you know, I arrived in, uh, with Corley and Mike on the team and. We had a great time. I didn't expect to win anything. Um, and uh, yeah, it was actually, at first they announced, I think it was Ship. Um, if I'm not mistaken, as the winner and then they're like, oh wait, actually, it's product time. Yeah.

• 26:23Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah. And then, uh, transitioning from PM to CEO, what's hard about it?

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Hard, um, well, what I would say is, as a PM, you're actually very much a generalist. You have to communicate with. Pretty much everyone on the team. You have to do a lot of things. Um, and so that's been very helpful in transitioning to this role. But with, I guess, as a CEO role, your kind of ultimate job is to hire yourself out of a job in many ways. And so as we've grown the team, I need to find someone who's, you know, a better social person than me. I need to find a better designer than me. Need to find, you know, a better community manager and leader than me. And so eventually, um, I just hire myself out of a job and then go to Hawaii is the goal. Uh, just kidding.

• 27:07Harry Stebbings?

  That's what the DCs want to hear, yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:09Harry Stebbings?

  And then the founder or investor that you admire the most?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Oh, I have a really hard time choosing, uh, this one, um, but someone that comes to mind, uh. Is Heaton Shaw, just because he's super willing and, and giving to, of his time, uh, he's willing to meet, I swear, every, anyone. Like you email him, he'll probably say, yeah, let's meet up at, um, uh, Sam of RT Lounge, which is where he always hangs out. And he's just a really insightful guy. He knows the right questions to ask to actually lead you to your answer. It's great.

• 27:43Harry Stebbings?

  And then favorite productivity tools?

• 27:47Speaker 02

  I should probably use more of that, to be honest. I, I don't think I use any unless you count. You know, things like Sunrise, like calendar apps or things like that. I've, I used to use Pomodoro, uh, to kind of focus and, and work through certain tasks. But I kind of stopped that, um.

• 28:04Harry Stebbings?

  Do you meditate?

• 28:05Speaker 02

  I do not.

• 28:07Harry Stebbings?

  Check out Headspace. Headspace is a winner.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  I've heard great things.

• 28:11Harry Stebbings?

  And then your favorite book and why?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Oh, this is also something that's hard. I just like blogs and articles I used to read all the time. Um, I've stopped reading books because I just find myself consumed with just work stuff.

• 28:24Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Um, you know, what I do love is there's this book that I read a long time ago. That is something that most entrepreneurs probably haven't heard of is uh, it's Jesse Shell's The Art of Game Design. And it's, it's called, the subtitle is A Book of Lenses, and it actually is all about user psychology. And it talks through uh, different game mechanics and user psychology and how it's applied to games. But what's interesting is you can use that material. It's actually applicable to anything really, uh, particularly tech products. And I think there's a wealth of information there that most kind of tech entrepreneurs, like anyone building a website or app. They don't really think as much about some of these things that game designers think about all the time.

• 29:06Harry Stebbings?

  And then finally, the next five years for you and for Product Hunt. That's obviously if you're not in Hawaii.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  If I am in Hawaii, I'm probably gonna be on the computer. Um.

• 29:17Harry Stebbings?

  Well, there we go. I mean, that's something. Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. That was me um, about six months ago when I went on a trip with my family. Um. Yeah, you know, in five years, you'll see Product Hunt turn into a community and a site for all kinds of people and all kinds of things. And it will be a place where you can find all kinds of things from, you know, what, whatever you're most, most passionate about. And you can find like-minded people to connect with and geek out about that stuff.

• 29:41Harry Stebbings?

  And, and Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Seriously, it's been an absolute pleasure. Uh, and I've benefited from Product Hunt massively from being on the platform and it's been amazing for me. So seriously, thank you so much for, for creating such an amazing product.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, Harry. And so I just love that you're doing this. And um, I remember seeing it first pop up on Product Hunt maybe six months ago.

• 30:04Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Or so. And since then, you've had ridiculously awesome guests. I'm, I'm really impressed.

• 30:09Harry Stebbings?

  I'd like to say a huge thank you to Ryan for giving up his time to be on the show today and for those kind words. Very much appreciated and it really does mean a huge amount coming from you, Ryan. And if you're loving the show, then please do check out the site at www dot. 20minutavec.com and sign up to our newsletter so you never have to miss an episode. And do not forget to check out LawTrades, who are the best for helping startups and VCs get their legal work done by quality business lawyers. And with their one flat rate, you will pay a fraction of the price of what you would to a normal corporate lawyer, because they simply don't have the overheads. The same quality, unbelievably lower price. So check them out at www-lawtrades.com or say hi on Twitter at LawTrades.

• 30:54Harry Stebbings?

  They're also included in the show notes, so you can check them out there too. Thank you so much, as always, for your continued support and have a great weekend.