How we launched our app on Product Hunt and got 10k user sign-ups in 2 weeks

Photo credit: SpaceX.

The development of our app, Siftery, started in mid-2015, with the first user account registered on July 30. For the remainder of that year, the app remained in closed beta, with the number of users at only a few hundred large.

The team decided that January 20, 2016 would be our launch date. The app was good enough for public consumption—if barely—with the basic functionality in place. We were also in the final stages of closing our seed round and pitching a press launch and felt that getting our app on Product Hunt (PH), a website where users can discover new products, would create the right momentum.

On January 19, 2016—as our launch approached—there were 1,290 users on Siftery. We already knew PH was a great channel to attract early adopters and estimated it could net us a few hundred new user sign-ups, and maybe even pass the 2,000-user mark.

Instead, this happened:

Putting up our product on the site helped catalyze a two-week launch period during which we received over 50,000 visitors and gained over 10,000 user sign-ups—a majority of users signed up with their business emails. Out of this, at least 6,000 sign-ups could be attributed to PH directly.

Over the same period, users added tens of thousands of products to their company profiles, made thousands of product recommendations, and we found many of our most active users.

How did we do it?

Even in our most optimistic scenarios, we weren’t expecting such interest and support. Part of it was luck and another part was solving a relevant problem for users.

However, there were a few things we did to prepare and maximize our chance to do well on the site. Most of what we could do was in the preparation stage, as launch day itself was mostly about playing out the plan and hoping for the best.

Here’s what we think worked for us.

Be deliberate about a launch date

For our launch, we selected a day during the middle of the week when we thought the product would be stable and when everyone on the team could focus on the launch. More importantly, we wanted our launch to fit in well with our other objectives, such as closing our seed funding.

Find a super user to hunt you

Prepare captions, descriptions, images, and other assets

Share the launch with your network

Send personalized messages

Aim for the top early

Keep up the momentum

Tools that made our life easier that day