YouSaid · the spoken record

Ryan Hoover

lines on the record: 85
first: 2022-08-07
most recent: 2022-08-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah. Yeah. So in the post flow, there's actually a links to a bunch of guides and FAQs and things like that. So it's really easy to find sort of the best practices there. The team also has like this checklist. So once you launch, there's like a checklist of things, recommendations or tips. And I'm actually forgetting what each of them are specifically right now. But some of the things that I've noticed that make a big difference is we've already talked about the tagline copy that goes to not only the post, but also the maker who usually people tend to add like some introduction, some context. Generally, a lot of people will, they manufacture PR speak there too. And so speaking more like a human, I think is important. Also keeping it a little brief. Some people write essays, which might be interesting, but the reality is most consumers, especially people on product at, you know, they're flipping through a bunch of ideas. They're looking for things that spark their curiosity and interest. And they're probably not particularly interested in.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sick of the PR speech. And so I think the language and the micro copy copywriting matters so much. And then there's a lot of other things around like, which go more to the product and less about the launch. Like, do you really understand who you're building for? And do you understand how to communicate the value problem? Where does fit in the mind of the user? Sort of a lot of, I guess, more strategic kind of like decisions that go into that before the launch.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, this goes back to college. And I won't go on my own rant about education, but English class and writing class, a lot of teachers teach people to write with big words and fill pages of content and basically not speak like a human. And so one thing I've noticed among founders and just people in general is they tend to write like a PR person and not like a human and not like, you know, the way that I kind of describe kind of a frame of writing maybe your tagline for product or for your launch in general is like how do your customers or your users describe your product to other people? Or another frame is how do you describe it to your friends? Like when you're just, you know, hanging out, like how do you describe what you do, what you built, what it's for. And that language, I think resonates with people because it feels way more authentic. And the people that use buzzwords and vague language, it just doesn't click. People see, right?”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should look at our database on Product and see how many launches we've had because it's going to be a subset of that. I mean, by seeing some of it's very high level, tens of thousands over the years.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you've accomplished and what you've built and put it out to the world. And, you know, somebody on the team can share the Protestant launch or, you know, some TechCrunch article with their mom. And that seems like a trivial kind of meaningless thing, but it actually matters for a lot of people. And then the other thing is SEO. So SEO is like a part of your strategy, having articles, positive articles, having a positive product launch, things like that can also be helpful.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feedback from users, feedback just serendipitously. And sort of another one is partnership. So as you launch, you might also encounter more partnerships, more opportunities. I think there's a serendipitous effect of launching. So I think understanding like what are the priorities in the business? Like if you, it might not be customer acquisition at all. It might be that we need to recruit and hire, let's launch so we can get the word out. Hopefully that will help land our next engineers, designers, or whoever. And then I will also say there's like these little side benefits too of launching that we see a lot through product hunt. One of them is team morale. And this might, I think this is overlooked. And I would also encourage founders not to get their team to, I would say you shouldn't be motivated to launch a product just to get like the likes on Twitter and the upvotes on product hunt. But there is a powerful team morale and kind of building moment there where you can also sell.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I always kind of, whenever I share my perspective on stuff, unfortunately, I'm always, always like, it kind of depends, which is kind of like, sounds like a cop-out answer. So it's more, my answers are usually more nuanced. And the thing about launching is going back to why are you raising money? What's the goal? Same thing. Why are you launching? And a lot of people default to things like customer acquisition. Oh, I want to acquire customers. But sometimes that's actually not, it's not useful. Launch sometimes doesn't help with that. But there are many other reasons why you might want to launch. So customer acquisition is one to get the word out. Now there can be recruiting. So by sharing your story, getting people excited, it might make it easier to recruit and get people excited about what you're building. Another is fundraising. Sometimes it can create momentum, you know, as other investors, they do read the news and they know that, you know, when this company is more public, there might be more heat around a particular deal. Feedback is one.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yeah. Because you can't get off. I mean, you can, but it's not like a company. I always say, like, when you're at a company, you could put in two weeks notice, one month notice. You can move on. As a founder or CEO, you can't like you really can't. Now, you technically can, but you can't. It's really hard. To exit.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, especially if it's, I mean, I think it's very important to raise from people who are aligned with you too, meaning, why does this person want to, whether it's an angel or a fun, invest in your fund? Sorry about fun, your company. When you go down a certain path, when you raise a series A, B, C, you have different expectations when you raise your pre-seed or seed round. So I think also understanding what you're signing up for is super important.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's a lot of other decisions and other things that probably bigger mistakes I think I made. Not that raising money was a mistake by any means. I was thinking the right decision then. But there's a lot of learnings in hindsight's 2020.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know what the right at the time raising money was the right decision because I wanted to hire and I didn't have personal capital. There really weren't any other realistic options, I don't think. Today, I could get further with my own. I'm not super wealthy and I'm super illiquid, but I have at least enough money where I could have funded maybe a year of development with this very small team. So today it might be a little bit different in which I might not raise venture capital because productant isn't the type of company that needs to raise a ton of money. It's also one which is not, doesn't have like direct competitors in the sense of like an Uber and Lyft situation where raising is actually like kind of mandatory and you sort of have to build a massive war chest to compete. So there is a scenario where if I had more money then maybe I winterbraise venture capital.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great question. So at the time, Is also the thing I ask factors is why do you need to raise money? Like, what is it for? And surprisingly, some people, I don't know. Like, they don't have a clear answer. For me, it was pretty obvious. Like, we needed to hire. We needed people. I didn't have personal capital to pay people. There was an alternative reality where we actually built it open source. I was thinking like, is that possible? Like we're building something for the tech community. I'm sure a lot of people would love to work on this. Could we build it in an open source way? But that, like, that's really hard to do. And when you're building a company, you probably don't want to innovate on too many things, including essentially how to build a product and build a team. So anyway, to answer your question, if”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It had like multiple meanings. Yeah, it was three meanings. One was that it started weekend fun when I was building product hunt. So took a lot of pitches and calls the founders on the weekends. Two, I think a lot of great ideas start by metaphorically speaking nights and weekends, kind of side projects or ideation. And then the third reason was it was like more friendly. I don't know. I didn't want to name it Hoover Capital or something like Sterile. I wanted it to be.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really to learn and see if people want this thing and then kind of adapt. And so an experimental mindset is helpful. And I think a valuable way to start, it even goes back to like why I named the fun weekend fund. It's like, what are you tinkering with on the weekends? And how can you be more curious and experimental and kind of your exploration of new startup ideas?”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wanted to. And so I don't know. I think a lot of those decisions are very personal and contextual. However, I think it's super important that founders see a line of sight to work on this for. I think my rule of thumb is a decade. Just do you see yourself working on this for a decade? And maybe it's not a decade that you actually work on it. It probably won't. It'll probably fail before then, as most startups do. But I think it's a good litmus test for yourself to be like, do I actually care about this enough? Am I really stoked to work on this? for many, many years. But then, you know, the other thing is I think a lot of people also think I need to start a company. I need to start a startup. And they skip to that step without just tinkering and building and, you know, product that we called it, not even a side product. We called an experiment. And that framing, I think, is for me has always been helpful because it's an experiment is really not about success. Of course, you want it to be successful, but the goal is not success, I put that in quotes.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we've gone through some pretty massive bull cycles where that was possible for a lot of people. But it's a huge decision. So with product end, it was a side project in the beginning. It wasn't actually intended to be a startup at all. But in the beginning, it was a newsletter, then it was a website, and it was about four to five months before we even incorporated. And we got a lot of traction. So it was during that time, I was really just thoughtful around like, should we raise do I want to work on this for many, many years? What's the opportunity? Is this even a venture backable like idea? Like all those questions were circulating in my mind for a while. And this is also in a time when the market was pretty, was similarly bullish. This is end of 2013, early 2014. And investors were using products that reach out to me and they were sort of courting me and kind of doing that all song and dance to invest. But I just wasn't sure if I wanted.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I do spend time, ironically challenging founder sometimes when they're thinking about raising or thinking about an idea to not raise. I think people who are in tech, especially at certain bubbles of tech, that's the default. It's like the first.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, that's exactly going back to my point about like it takes a long time to write content that you're proud of. I'm also just a very particular about words for better or worse. And so I. The first draft actually is maybe like 20 or 30 percent of the time, and then the rest is refining it and getting feedback and everything else”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In that you're really pulling in experts in their domain expertise to find answers or inspiration. And I've always liked that format because one, it, I think leads to a better results, better content, better answers, but also it's arguably easier. Like imagine if you tried to write, well, you're shaking your head almost like maybe if I had the answers.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always liked your format, by the way, in that you're a curator in many sense. Yeah, you have a lot of experience and good ideas, but you're not trying to answer all the questions.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't say anything super surprising, however, a lot of people, so you could do the same thing on Twitter and say, hey, AMA, ask me anything in public. The thing is people are not going to ask certain things for a lot of reasons. And maybe the biggest surprise was a lot of people were pretty vulnerable. These are strangers, founders who DM me saying, hey, we have three months runway left. We're running out of money. Here's a situation. What advice do you have? just things that everyone has to wear this unfortunate mask is kind of the way i what i used to describe it this mask in life and business where everything is going great and you know you're super confident there are no problems you got it all under control and so the reality is that's not the case like if you peered inside of almost every single company it probably looks chaotic in different ways and so i guess i guess i guess i guess i guess maybe the biggest surprise or thing that i value the most is the authenticity of people willing to share some of these um vulnerable moments and questions”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's been fun. I do that maybe once every three or four days, I share a new question and answer and sort of like a, it's like microblogging in a way. I guess it's for Twitter is, but like it's a kind of like a real microblogging kind of like activity for me.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of my motivation for that was, I don't know, I was just killing time. And the other was I used to blog a lot. I used to write a lot. I don't know, I've written hundreds of blog posts, but not so much anymore. I really write anymore. And part of it's because it just takes so long to write. And sometimes I don't feel like inspired by any topic. It's sort of like a writer's block. And so I found this also kind of as a means to like do micro, almost like micro blog posts in a way where the prompt is the question from somebody else. I don't have to think about the prompt. And then the answer is in some ways away from me to actually think about that topic, almost like refine my own thinking in some sense. And so I started doing that and I realized, well, maybe other people have similar questions and maybe other people have other answers and other ideas too. So I would just take a screenshot of my answer and kind of summarize their answer. Of course, keeping anonymous, not sharing anything that would be sensitive and just put it on Twitter.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, I opened up my DMs. I had them closed, which is traditionally the default on Twitter for a long time because I was like, oh, if I open them up, I'll just get a bunch of spam and I don't need another inbox to call through. I opened it up quietly and actually didn't get a long spam surprisingly. Yeah, people would shill something or promote something, but it wasn't too bad. So I left it open. And then I forget one day I was, maybe I was like on the elliptical bike or the recumbent bike or something. And I was just like, I tend to get on the bike and just hold my phone up and just do emails and work. And so I just said, hey, DM me if you have the question. Any founders? And I'll try and like answer as many as I can.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They each have their own pros and cons. They each cost effectively different prices. And so we visited Miami a year and a half ago and we just fell in love with lots of it. It's just cheaper. It's cheaper than the Bay Area. It's cheaper than LA. When you kind of count like all-in costs, we had a bunch of friends move there. So we enjoyed the city. We're like, this is good, strong ROI. This is a good product. Let's move there. But at the same time, as I mentioned, we are traveling and exploring other cities. So it's kind of the best of both worlds for us.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. You know, so the way I describe cities are kind of like a product. So if you're in the supermarket or supermarket, I sound like an old person. If you're at a store, you're looking at different products. If you're online, you're evaluating different products. And they each have like a cost and they have some benefits or values or whatever you want to use to describe.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Call it bicoastal per se, but something like that, where two thirds of the year were Miami and maybe a third were in New York or LA or someplace else. And I love that. Fortunately, we have the flexibility. When I say we, my girlfriend, Susie and I, to just carry our laptops and work anywhere. So it's been a nice lifestyle kind of shift.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a list of. No, no, I know what you're saying. There's also a whole series of things that I don't talk about. Some of them, well, anyway, I won't talk about the things I can't talk about. But one thing that most people don't know about, I know there's certain juicy things like everybody has in their life. I recently moved to, well, I guess spending a year. I moved to Miami about a year ago. And I haven't been talking about it publicly primarily because I just didn't want to be lumped into Oh, another person moving to Miami. Like, I don't know. There's no benefit or reason for me to do so. I want my friends there in Miami to know I'm there, but otherwise I don't need the world to know. I guess now they will. That said, in Miami, you know, we're there about two-thirds of the year. So I'm actually in California right now as, you know, the summer humidity comes through Miami and hurricane season. We're planning to do more of, I wouldn't call it nomadic.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, events are fun. We threw a bunch of them at Product, and yeah, you could do a lot of selfies and a lot of handshakes. And there's some energy there. I'm an introvert, though. So by hour, like three or four, I'm just like, I need to use the restroom because I haven't been able to escape. And I'm socially exhausted. But they are fun.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About my actions, and I can't just like be entirely loose and relax with my friends. So anyway, there's always pros and cons in those types of things. But it definitely makes you more aware of, I'm already a very sometimes anxious and like self-aware person in terms of like my surroundings. And so when you combine that with, oh, these strangers might be watching me is not the best thing in the world, but it's okay.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Super well known in the Bay Area. Really fun, fun kind of experience. Anyway, I remember being with friends and drinking, like one does and somebody turns around and says, is that the Protestant guy? That was the first time that sort of happened in that setting where I was like, oh gosh, now I have to like.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, in San Francisco, where everybody's in tech, there's a lot of that. And probably the The moment where I was like, oh, this is like a thing. It was probably early product and I was at, do you remember, I don't know if you know this, do you know a club called DNA Lounge and they did something called Booty every Saturday? It was like a mashup dance party.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so probably 10 started in late 2013 and quickly got a lot of traction in the tech sphere. So yeah, people in tech might recognize me. People asked out of tech doubt they recognize me. I actually do wonder subconsciously if I drew my hair out to avoid being recognized. I'm not sure if that's true or not. Anyway, it's been a couple years or so growing my hair out. And I'm like, I just kind of want to like disappear sometimes.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hey, Lenny, thanks for having me. I've been reading a lot of your blog posts over, I don't know, past two or three years now, and I'm glad to see you do the podcast now. It's cool.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know how to articulate that feeling, but that flutter in your stomach that you wake up with in the morning of just anxiety and stress and worry. Being a CEO or founder makes it slightly harder in some ways because you still have to put on this mask. You have to put on the space of confidence externally and internally as well where people need to trust you. You also don't want to subject them to the same anxiety that you're feeling and be 100% transparent.”
2022-08-07 · Lenny's Podcast · How to launch and grow your product | Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source