How to Use Product Hunt as a SaaS Go-to-Market Channel

Omer (00:09.280)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talk to Vedran Rasic, the co founder and CEO of Lead Delta, a product that helps you build better relationships with your LinkedIn connections.
Veda is also the creator of Product Hunt Masterclass, a course that teaches you how to run a successful product launch and is based on his personal experience of having done several successful and not so successful launches.
In this episode, we're going to condense that masterclass down to less than 45 minutes and teach you how to do a successful Launch for your SaaS product on product Hunt.
By the end of this episode, you'll have a solid understanding of how you can use Product Hunt.
You'll know what to do before, during, and after your launch.
You'll understand the key mistakes people make on Product Hunt and how you can avoid them.
And we'll tell you about some tools you can use to make your life even easier.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Ved, welcome to the show.

Vedran Rasic (01:18.060)
So nice to be here.
Omer, thank you so much for having me, for inviting me.

Omer (01:21.660)
My pleasure.
Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires and motivates you or gets you out of bed that you can share with us?

Vedran Rasic (01:27.590)
Yeah, I kind of like the quote.
I don't know who said it, but like, start small, act now, basically, and, you know, kind of think big, start small, act now is kind of.
It's kind of my mantra, but I don't know who said it.
I read it somewhere a few years ago.

Omer (01:39.710)
Yeah, I love that.
Tell us about Lead Delta.
What does the product do, who's it for, and what's the main problem that you're helping to solve?

Vedran Rasic (01:47.030)
Yeah, so.
So Lead Delta is your social capital manager.
We're trying to define a new category.
In a NutShell, we help B2B professional more effectively through the power of their combined networks.
Right.
We've noticed a big trend in the market.
There's a whole bunch of companies doing outbound and outreaching in a very cold fashion.
And my premise is there's so much data out there and users, end users are getting smarter and smarter and more than ever, your network is your net worth.
And this is the trend we're trying to capitalize on and provide more opportunities for, for the regular guys and professionals entering the market.

Omer (02:26.200)
Give me an example of how somebody might Use Lead Delta.

Vedran Rasic (02:29.800)
So currently Lead Delta works on top of LinkedIn as a Chrome plugin.
It basically gives you a gist of what we're about to do in the near future and why we're fundraising.
So currently we have some 6,000 users using Leadelta to tag and organize their network because it only works with LinkedIn.
So currently LinkedIn you don't have tags, you don't have notes, basic things you'd expect LinkedIn to have.
So we turned that into a beautifully designed table where you can oversee your connections, you can apply tags, you can apply notes, you can send some group messages, you can organize your inbox by filtering based on these tags, by applying pinned messages and just general things people would expect you to have.
And again, the premise is you Keep connecting on LinkedIn, you keep growing your network and then what, what do you do with that network?
So, so we're trying to give you signals on your first degree connections that you can actually act on instantaneously.
So in a nutshell, great.

Omer (03:26.940)
So we're going to talk about the Lead Delta story and your background in another episode, but today we're going to talk about how to run a successful Product Hunt launch for a SaaS product.
What we want to try to do is to give listeners, by the end of this episode, we want to help them understand the fundamentals of how to do a successful Product Hunt launch.
So really learn about how to go to market the tools that they can use for a successful campaign to understand how to produce and capture value on Product Hunt and how they can use Product Hunt to generate traction for their SaaS product.
So that's the goal of this interview.
Why don't we start by you just helping us understand, like why should SaaS founders who haven't considered it so far think about doing a Product Hunt launch and is it good for every type of SaaS product?

Vedran Rasic (04:17.870)
Great questions.
I think, you know, every SaaS founder in the early stages should consider launching on Product hunt because there's 4 million unique visitors or.
Well, yeah, visitors, users, how Google calls them nowadays on Pranahan every month.
Right.
So, so that, that's, that's quite a lot.
And you know, it's just when you think of a bell curve and the distribution of users like the first 2.5%, which you need to get to the next stage, which we call innovators, are basically on Product Hunt.
And the cool thing about that is that you have people from all over the world.
It is a misconception to think that it's just A particular, you know, people from particular geo region or particular job titles.
It's just like there's, there's people that fit to the 2.5% description of an innovator and this is why this is so important.
These people are not willing to pay a lot of, but they're willing to lend you their time.
So you have people like you and I, moderately successful, super successful, whatever and then you have people like CTO of HubSpot Dharmesh.
Right.
So do I still have to keep explaining why I should be on Pranahunt?
And a great question you asked is what type of a SaaS product should you or would you consider launching on Pranahunt?
And my honest opinion is like almost any like I can't really think of a product that you don't want to market on Pranahunt.
Like if you are in B2B SaaS which we're discussing, discussing now about is like absolutely, go on Product Hunt and depending we'll talk a little bit about matrix of incentives and what kind of price you want to have, what kind of offer you want to give, what are you asking for, what are your goals and objectives you're optimizing for?
But generally I don't see a reason why not to launch.
Like you can see a consumer product being launched like every new Apple gadget gets launched on Pranahan.
So it's a community of tech enthusiasts and I don't see a reason why not to launch on Great.

Omer (06:12.690)
I guess one question people might have listening to us is why should we listen to VED about Product Hunt?
So why don't you tell us a little bit about your background?
What have you personally done on Product Hunt and what type of results have you been able to get?

Vedran Rasic (06:25.290)
100%.
So I've been on Product Hunt for, for like I don't know, like since the assumption I think like maybe, maybe a year later or something.
And it's just again an amazing community that literally helps you do anything product related.
For example, I get lists and ideas about competitors on Prawn Hunt.
You can sense trends and what people want and like and don't like.
Right.
And so I really fell in love with the community and I'm there like a few times a week.
But then moving forward, when I became a creator, when I started creating and shipping products, I figured out well I might launch as well.
So the first really big product that I launched was autoclose back in 2018 I believe.
And it's a 24 hour campaign.
Realistically right.
It lasts for 24 hours.
But with all the preparation pre and post that we're going to talk about, we managed to get 5,000 unique visitors in a single day, out of which I'd say 80% were relevant, to be frank, to our audience.
I can't really remember the exact results, but back then we had a superb deal for the audience.
I think it was like 50% off, forever grandfathered in.
So big, audacious for this audience that does not want to pay much.
And we managed to convert like a whole bunch.
This was our initial great start and it was actually hard for us to catch up with that campaign because we had a huge spike in conversions in visitors.
And the best part, there's a spillover effect over the next few days and weeks and even months.
And this really launched auto close into the atmosphere.
And I'd say we completed a whole bunch of our early checkpoints that we wanted to achieve after exiting the beta.
Now, fast forward.
We figured out that there's different ways that we can stimulate that traffic to our website by launching the other different products.
So, like courses, masterclasses, ebooks, any type of a digital product would go moderately to amazingly well on Product Hunt.
And that's what we kept doing.
Like, if you go and check my profile on Product Hunt, you can see all the products I launched and you can see there's a ton of upvotes, ton of comments, and it's one of the ways it's a magnet for your future followers because once you get a creator status, how do you say it, like the items you have on your profile and you know, you get boosted a bit more by Product Hunt and whatnot.
So there's multiple benefits.
And then now with Lead Delta, which is a bit more fresher kind of example.
So a year ago we went live on Product Hunt and we won the number one product of the day, which is one of the rewards you're getting for folks that are not into it.
And that was insane.
I think we had 499 customers day one.
So that's, I mean, that's quite insane.
Like I tweeted about it, so you can, you can see the screenshots and everything on my Twitter profile, but that was insane.
And then a lot of subscribers to our newsletter, a lot of interested parties and fame, quite frankly, for the product and the team.
Now a year later, we redid it, we won it again.
The results were a bit more modest because we didn't optimize for money, we optimized for free pr.
So to speak.
And when I was pitching, actually when I was preparing my pitch for the demo week, which we're partaking now here in Europe, one of the investors came up and he's like, well, why don't you put that you are second year in a row, number one on Product Hunt.
So that is the benefit of producthunt, right?
You get a whole bunch from these campaigns.

Omer (09:50.760)
If done well, is it really a good fit for new products?
Like when you said you were launching Auto Close, what if somebody already has a product, maybe they launched several years ago and maybe there's no launch, nothing new.
It's just like trying to get some attention there.
And then what about somebody who Maybe has a SaaS product, tried a Product Hunt launch in the past, which failed miserably?
Can they go back?
Is there still an opportunity for them to have another shot?

Vedran Rasic (10:19.310)
So now they built actually a new feature just a few days ago from today, we're recording this and what you can do is you can bring your entire product launches, all of them together combined into a single profile.
Now that's kind of new thing that they're having it and it's quite good.
Why?
Because people like myself, we were launching version one, version two, version three, and I think the rule of thumb is like six months, don't launch between less than six months.
Apart from.
So that would be my suggestion.
So we did it every.
We do it every year, basically is kind of my objective for the main product.
But then if I have an ebook, if I'm building a university for my customers, if I'm building a community or something, I would also publish that because you get a really nice spike that day and those weeks around the launch.
So it's an ad hoc campaign that now Product Hunt is trying to make like something that repeats itself every once in a while and absolutely, you should do it again.

Omer (11:19.420)
Okay, great.
So you've created a masterclass on how to do a Product Hunt campaign, which I think is great, by the way.

Vedran Rasic (11:28.460)
I appreciate you, man.
And in all honesty, the story, how that course came to be or masterclass came to be is amazing because people kept asking me, like, how do I launch?
How do I launch?
How do I launch?
And again, from complete noobs to like multimillion dollar founders, serial entrepreneurs, I was like, you know what?
Like, I'm not giving everybody like an hour of my time.
Like, listen, I'm not going to do that.
So Saturday morning I announced, hey, I'm going to build a course masterclass.
I worked through Saturday on the copy Sunday I rerecorded using Loom and boom, I launched it.
And you know, it's kind of, I was just, you know, just trying to help people out.

Omer (12:04.540)
Did you like that on Product Hunt as well?

Vedran Rasic (12:06.380)
It's coming.
Why not, right?
It's coming.

Omer (12:11.480)
So we're going to give listeners an overview of what that masterclass is about.
So by the end of this episode, they have enough of an understanding and actionable takeaways that they can go and do something themselves.
And if people want to do more, we'll point them to, to the masterclass and they can figure out how to get that.
So why don't we start with that?
So we're going to talk about generally like how to prepare, how to set the right objectives for a campaign, what to do before the campaign, what to do during that critical period when the campaign is as actually launched, and then what to do after.
And then we're also going to share a few tools that you use that you recommend that people can use.
So why don't we start with objectives and what's really important here for people when they're starting to think about using Product Hunts.

Vedran Rasic (12:54.900)
So number one thing is exactly what you mentioned.
Like, you know, what are you trying to accomplish?
Like that's, that's the number one thing again.
Yeah, you know, it's a no brainer,

Omer (13:03.180)
but a lot of people are like,

Vedran Rasic (13:04.140)
I want to be number one product of the day.
That's not an objective, right?
Like that's not the right objective, basically.
First things first.
Is this a proof of concept so that you want to get early feedback for?
Is that the objective?
Are you trying to increase traffic?
Because then you can launch an ebook.
Doesn't matter if you're first, second, third, it matters that people are downloading it, that people are visiting the landing page, et cetera.
Are you trying to get more leads, more users, more, you know, are you trying to get more cash?
That's totally legit in the first phases of the startup.
You can definitely expect that from, from Product Hunt.
Are you trying to boost for, for pr for some social signals that you know, you know what you're doing, like you want to get yourself out there.
Those are all the objectives I have in mind when, when launching the Product Hunt campaign.
And like I said, first time we launched it, we had a very appealing price.
It was a lifetime price.
I didn't care much about it.
I just wanted to show that there's some fire here.
And again, these guys, your early product hunters, doesn't matter where they are in their career.
Like all of them have some same, like similar characteristics and one of them is they don't want to spend much.
Some folks will just hit that upvote button and they will read the copy and they won't do anything else because the copy will be appealing.
Right.
So again, you really have to optimize for these things and then hopefully we're going to touch base on some of these and based on their objective, you come up with what I call like a just enough effort matrix, which is, you know, where you have like a call to action, you know, preparation during the campaign launch day and offer like, like a mix of these things is what I call product hump matrix.

Omer (14:43.700)
Great.
So you get clear on the objective.
One thing you just said, which, which sparked another question was when we look at something like for example, like an app Sumo launch, there's a, there's some similarities and typically you'll find lifetime deals, one time payment.
So even for a SaaS business, there's not a lot of products going there and selling subscriptions to that audience.
Is that the same way to think about Product Hunt?
Will a one time payment for this type of audience work better than charging a subscription?

Vedran Rasic (15:15.550)
Absolutely, absolutely.
First time you're launching and if you're bootstrapped and you want to get to cash, which is what was the case in both Auto close and with Lead Delta, like I said at the beginning, now we're appraising, but we really started bootstrapped and that was our path.
So I was totally fine with doing lifetimes.
Like who cares?
Like for 3,5000 licenses, who cares?
But what's really important for you guys here to know is timelines.
So I said three months, you get your lifetime.
Cancel my subscription, I don't care.
Like I'll motivate you to go and buy a lifetime.
But after three months, that's it, no more.
And so it's very important because a lot of founders are like, this guy want to pay me, wants to pay me, but you know, like, okay, I'll sell you an ltd, let's figure out a deal, right?
So that's definitely not how you want to do it.
So you want to really put a word out there.
This is the deadline, this is when we're stopping because we need to build this business.
And this is where you actually get a lot of reviews.
So we have on Product Hunt, I have like, I think like 300 reviews, five star reviews.
You can check on producthunt.compost/leadelta, I think forward slash.
So you can get that amount of attention anywhere else.
So appsumo, Product Hunt, that's where your innovators are.
They understand tech, they don't care about your bugs, like about what's working, what's not working.
What they care about is the vision and there's anything that's kind of working.
So you optimize for that audience.
So that's number one goal if you're kind of trying to get users.
And I think Appsumo and Product Hunt are brilliant if you know what you're optimizing for.

Omer (16:49.700)
Okay, great.
So let's say we've defined a clear objective, let's talk about this just enough matrix.

Vedran Rasic (16:56.340)
So a couple of things there, for example.
I'll just give you a couple of examples.
So again we talked about pricing.
You're not coming to Product Hunt with an enterprise grade product to kind of sell that product without any pre marketing, without you being on the market for a few years.
It's just not going to happen.
So what you can try and do there is like again, collect some reviews, collect some feedback, you know, share some thought ideas and see how the market reacts to that, at least that early market.
Right.
So that, that will, that will definitely depend.
Like again the preparation will depend quite a bit because if you're really trying to hit the product of the day on Product Hunt and Product of the Week, like your preparation will change dramatically.
Like you really need to put in like some three weeks at the very least create lists of people, your users that are going to support you, etc.
But if you have no users, why even optimizing for that, optimize for feedback, you know what I mean?
So that's how you know, every piece influences the other, you know, what is the call to action?
Like are they going to a landing page and where's that landing page taking them?
Because for example, what I try and do when visitors come from Pranahunt, you know, there's, there's usually a link that tells Google, hey, you know, they're coming from Product Hunt.
And then you can serve some personalized experiences because again, those early users that will delight them and super simple to build.
So again, depending on what you're optimizing for, this matrix will change.
And I talk more about that in the course.
It would take us like at least 30 minutes to go over all that.
But we will go over the preparation part, what to do during the campaign and what to do post campaign.
So I think, think that would give people enough of concrete things to go after what I Think is also useful.
Omer to mention is what can you win on Product Hunt, right?
You gain a real tangible reputation in the terms of points you get on your profile when you launch, when people engage in your product and your comments when they upvote you, et cetera.
What's really cool is that if you're in top 10 products of the day, you get featured the next day.
So I think that's, that's really cool because you know, they send that.
Don't, don't hold me for a word, but I think there's like close to a million subscribers or like half a million subscribers.
Just an insane figure, right?
So all of these, I mean, I read Product Hunt newsletters because they're very relevant.
They talk about products, trends and you know, I just like to see a summary who won?
Because by looking at that, you start creating trends in your head.
Your, your little AI of a brain starts connecting the dots, right?
So that's kind of cool.
You can again win product of the day week and month.
That's really cool because when the 24 hour ends, you can still push for uploads, comments and engagement when you're profile because then you actually start to compete for an annual reward which will give you an additional boost.
So all of that is like super cool.

Omer (19:56.680)
I want to go back quickly, just briefly, to the subscription versus one time payment on the lifetime deal.
If a founder is listening to this today for their SaaS product and saying, well, I get that, but I already have customers who are paying a subscription.
If I go and then go on to Product Hunt and offer this lifetime thing for a limited time or whatever, am I at risk?
I'm going to piss off my existing customers?

Vedran Rasic (20:20.230)
Yes, you will.
So I would, I would say don't do it.
You know, in all honesty, I know.
So there, there's circumstances in which you could.
And I'll talk more about that, but by and large I'd say don't do it.
You know, just, it doesn't make sense if you're already having subscribers.
So if you're already having over 100 subscribers, let's put it that way, and your ARPU is like, I don't know, 20, 30 bucks.
Don't do it.
Like, I mean, it's not late, but like it's lame.
I mean, count that, you're going to lose all your subscribers.
And if that's a worthwhile goal and you by all measures want to stay bootstrapped, you don't have high server costs, okay, maybe it makes sense and you can Check with the appsumo guys and whoever else if the product is attractive enough.
And if it is, well, listen, maybe you can make a half a million or something and it will help you survive the next two years.
So maybe, you know, maybe, maybe it's worth losing those like 20 bucks subscribers.
But in most circumstances it will depend on your costs and it will depend on how far ahead are you in your journey now.
So you asked, so I have to, I have to give you my elaborate advance because I've seen multiple.
So there's companies that can actually chunk down a piece of their software and make it attractive enough for people to put in the credit cards and pay something and then when they become more advanced users, they convert to a subscription.
That model works.
It's pretty cool, I'd say.
But yeah, it depends on that.
Heavily depends on the product.

Omer (21:45.440)
Okay, great.
That's good advice.
Let's say we figured out the objective.
We have gone through and got a general approach that we're going to take with our launch.
The next step is really like the pre campaign, right.
So you've got to get ready for this.
So what are the main things that need to get done at the pre campaign stage?

Vedran Rasic (22:04.040)
Yeah, so, so the pre campaign stage, there's, there's a couple of things to, to consider.
One thing that I talk about in the course is like Product Hunt has a premium offering and it's called, it's a premium product called Ship and they have different packages.
What I suggest is getting the first paid package or the second.
Actually like it's, it's in the course.
I can't, I can't actually think it's first or second because it gets you the Product Hunt promotion.
It gets you a landing page before the launch for you to collect leads and it gets you some embeddable widgets and whatnot.
So all that is very useful.
When you look at the cost.
It's like 80, 80 bucks.
It's not cheap.
Right.
For most founders.
Do I really need it?
Why would I pay 80 bucks?
However, I keep saying it pays for itself, right?
Because you get stripe credits.
If you're on stripe, you get some other credits and if you use any of these and you calculate the cost like it's a no brainer.
So you know, just grab that, save some of the costs and cancel later if you really want to.
So use it for, for that month of the launch.
So that's, that's one thing to really consider because Product Hunt will be promoting you what's really cool to do way Way, way before, like two, three months ahead is kind of warm up your profile.
Don't go to Product Hunt and be like, you know, zero followers, zero value given to the community.
So, and that's super easy, like when you Compare it to LinkedIn and Twitter, which is, you know, all these platforms are getting more and more crowded.
Product Hunt has maybe like a hundred active writers, like people who are starting discussions and engaging and whatnot.
So use that to your benefit and post more often, ask questions, contribute to the community, that will give you points.
And Product Hunt has a very simple strategy there.
The whole experience is gamified.
So it's kind of neat.
But you have like three medals, right?
Three colors, three metals, and you slowly progress.
Like with 500 points, you're at bronze level, 5 to 1000, you are at the silver thousand and over, you're at the gold level.
And it's not hard to reach that level.
And it helps you when you go outside and launch the product.
So yeah, just comment, engage and things like that.
Yeah.
Right.

Omer (24:13.900)
So the SHIP tool basically lets you create a landing page and obviously the big benefit that you describe is getting Product Hunt promotion behind it.
But what's the, what's the objective here with the landing page?
Is it to.
To collect email addresses or kind of like a coming soon thing before you actually do the launch a few months later?

Vedran Rasic (24:34.620)
Good point.
So, so it's a, it's a coming soon page where basically you do collect emails and you do collect interest.
Right.
So for example, we have direct integration into our mail and we have a direct integration into, into our slack.
So as soon as someone subscribes, like we send them more intel, we tell them approximation of when we're going to go live, if we know.
So it really helps to kind of engage with people and to show, hey, I'm a founder, I'm here, I'm approachable.
And this is what again, innovators love.
They love when you're approachable, when you're a cool, you know, lady or a guy or whatever, you know, like, she just like engage and that goes to your benefit.
But it's, yeah, you can, you can choose a simple landing page, people can leave emails, that's about it.
And plus you get their promotion, which is just quite useful.
You can place a widget on your website, things like that really helps you to, to close the circle.

Omer (25:25.330)
You also you mentioned something about warming up your profile and especially important if you haven't done much on Product Hunt or maybe you don't even have a product on Profile today.
What does warming it up mean?
Does that mean like just getting involved in the community, participating in other stuff that's going on?

Vedran Rasic (25:41.150)
Absolutely.
You know, like creating, like, you know, creating posts, engaging other products.
Like, don't be like, you know, hey, I'm here, look at me, I'm going to present my product, you know, go upvote, et cetera.
And you're not even there.
Right.
So for that matter, people are like, listen, I don't have time for product hunt.
Like, I don't care about that community.
And that's fair.
That's totally fair.
I say I don't care about TikTok, I just don't.
So what I'm going to do, I'm going to hire some influencers for influencers for TikTok.
So what you should do, if you don't care about product hunt, you don't care about a community.
Well, hire a hunter.
And a hunter is a person that hunts your product, as it says.
Right.
So.
And they help you get that instant boost.
I prefer launching my own products because I like the community and I'm, you know, I have a well built up profile.
So that's kind of difference there.

Omer (26:31.680)
So we're warming up our profile.
If we, if we're not already active in the community, we potentially, we've signed up for ship, we've got a landing page, we're collecting email addresses, we're trying to create some excitement.
What else do we need to do to prepare for the actual launch of the campaign?

Vedran Rasic (26:46.410)
I would say have at least 50 to 100 supporters that have used your product, that enjoy your product and are willing to rave about it.
Meaning they will upvote, they will leave a comment because without that, in all honesty, you're not going to do much.
Most folks expect that they're going to go live in product hunt and a miracle will happen.
Well, no, what's going to happen is that hustlers like myself will have these early adopters ready on a trigger and they'll come in and upload my product and engage and start discussions.
And you know what?
Nobody will even see your product.
So what's really important is that you have this early audience that gets engaged.
And this single advice is, is probably a few hundred thousand dollars worth advice because people don't get that.
Especially some of my techie colleagues.
They're like, oh, I just built this something cool and it's very cool.
Check this out.
And nobody checks it out because A, you don't know how to write a good copy, B, you Don't have any audience.
So those are really important things.
If you're launching on Product Hunt, you gotta have that.
Prepare your website, make sure that copy is in line, that you like what you're seeing when people land on the page, that it makes sense.
You know, like I describe in detail, like the.
Some of the copy tips in the masterclass.
And also, like, there's different copy levels that you need to write for Product Hunt.
So when you're happy with that, make sure that website tells the same story so that there's no discrepancies.
Make sure you have a Product Hunt exclusive discount.
That's not bad.
Even if your customers want to jump on that, why not give them that opportunity?
But time it, say 48 hours, right?
And give that discount for 48 hours.
If you can get on the radar of people that uploaded similar products, prepare FAQs, and more importantly, make sure that the product works to an extent that it's like you can export it.
And what I would say also create a checklist for the launch day, who does what.
Omera is going to do.
This vet's going to do that.
So just make sure that you distribute responsibilities amongst your teammates.
That's super, super important.

Omer (29:01.070)
Okay, so writing good copy is, as you said, super important.
People need to, when they arrive there, they need to understand, you know, what the product is, what the benefits are, is it right for them or not, and then what the offer is.
And as you said, it kind of gets a little bit weird if your website is telling a slightly different message or the offer is not kind of consistent with what they saw on Product.

Vedran Rasic (29:19.310)
Oh, you're going to hear about that.

Omer (29:21.230)
Yeah.
So what makes a great offer on a Product Hunt?
So we talked about, you know, a lifetime deal.
Would you just run it for 48 hours or would that be an exclusive thing that you do for.

Vedran Rasic (29:34.450)
You can't make it exclusive, right?
Like, you should say exclusively for Product Hunt, but you can't make it exclusive.
Like, once it's on your website, it's all over the place, people are resharing it.
You make a hype like your customers will come and whatnot.
So what you want to do is, is make something that your customers will be comfortable with and make something that will look good.
It has to look good.
For example, like, okay, so last time we launched Delta, we optimized for fame.
However, I still wanted to make some money.
However, I didn't follow my own advice.
So I said, listen, you already get this, but only today you get 5%.
You know, what like a handful of people took the deal.
Who cares about 5%?
This audience surely doesn't, you know, so, but there's different things you can do.
You can say like, you know, first four months completely off, you can say like whatever, you know, three times extended trial, you can say more credits.
If you're that type of credit driven business, you can say 50% off first year only.
Only first time customers.
You may still get like slapped by your own customers.
Like, why am I paying like a full price?
Or whatever, discounted tiny bit price.
But these things get, you know, people excited on product hunt.
If you say 5%, like I said, like that's, I thought I'm going to be smart by saying like four months and then some five, like when they sell five, like that's it, like nobody cares about 5%.

Omer (30:54.320)
So the 50 to 100 supporters you talked about, how do you get those people, you know, do you go to your email list?
Is it just, you know, friends, social, like how do you recruit these people?

Vedran Rasic (31:04.800)
Listen, if you don't have 100 supporters, like don't start a SaaS, start a media business first.
Because honestly, it's just hard.
Like if you don't have 100 people amongst your peers and friends and people around you, then like, I mean, what are, what are you doing?
Like, then you're probably like some.
And by the way, like some of my great, great friends are introverts.
But like they still have 100 friends or peers or somebody, right?
So what I'm trying to say is like, you know, you for sure have them make sure they're on product hunt, go source them.
If you don't have them, well then it's probably best to find a hunter.
Like, I mean, I never considered launching other people's products, but if I like them, you know, why not reach out to me?
I'll launch you, you know, for example, I'll do it for free, I'll do it for fame, you know, like whatever.
So then do it that way.
If this is not your natural thing.
But where can you find them?
Well, you know, where are you finding customers?
Early customer, indie hackers, Reddit, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, like penetrate out of communities and ask for support.
Like, it's as simple as that.
And there's a whole bunch of these product hunt groups that you can participate in, add value to and they'll support you on the launch day.
But just make sure you collect those 50 to 100.
And this is the way, right?

Omer (32:15.250)
Yep, this is the way.

Vedran Rasic (32:16.770)
This is the way.
I just Figured it out.

Omer (32:21.170)
All right, so it's launch day.
What's the focus?
What would you say is like, super important to make sure you, you get right?

Vedran Rasic (32:28.130)
There's a joke in a masterclass, like, where, like, it's.
It's always something like product Hunt keeps improving that they have better and better product.
But, like, every time I launch, there's some kind of a mess that I run into.
For example, multiple times I tried to click and launch and wouldn't launch.
And then it would be completely messed up copy some old draft that I like, edited like 100 times after.
So one of the slides is like, literally me being pissed off at the support, being like, guys, you know, what the hell's going on?
Where's my listing?
So just make sure you're there.
The campaign is launching at midnight, 01 PST Pacific.
So just make sure wherever you are in the world, I keep traveling some different time zones.
So, you know, just make sure you calculate that right, because the first hour is crucial.
Because in the first hour, again, hustlers like myself and people with big networks are pushing people to upvote them and get some early comments, and then they cement themselves at the first five positions.
And if you're not in the first five, first 10 positions, while you get See below into See More and not a lot of people click See more.
So it's really hard to get after that.
For example, this happened to me last time, so I tried to launch, it wouldn't launch.
We lost like 20 minutes.
And then support came back to me and they're like, oh, no worries, let's launch now.
I'm like, no, no, no, no.
Like, we're launching tomorrow, calling off the action.
And so tomorrow we launched and we were number one.
So that was number two of the week or whatever.
Number three.
So, so basically, like during the campaign, while checklist that I mentioned, checklist.
So stay focused on the checklist right from, from the day before.
Make sure that, that you don't think, especially that you have copywritten, that you don't think what you're going to write.
But literally, as each time zone wakes up, this is your target market.
This is when you Write posts on LinkedIn so that these people see it, you reach out to that side part of the world.
So to me, it's always amazing because I have 50% of my team in Central, central European time.
And then I have people in the east coast and I have people on the west coast, so we're covered for that part of the world.
But I also love to go after Australia, India and that part of the world, because they wake up first, obviously, and the campaign is going and that's where you get the support.
And as well, tomorrow, when I usually wake up, when I'm in Europe and when I'm in Toronto, I'm still kind of waiting to go to bed.
This is when that part of the world wakes up again.
So you can again go to same people, follow up, make sure they uploaded you and whatnot.
Again, Product Hunt will tell you, don't ask for upvotes.
Well, you know what I call BS on that, because if you don't do that, you're not gonna be top five.
If you're top 10, be happy.
But if you don't ask people to upload, you're just not gonna do anything.
So anyway, so when you launch, make sure again, you have the latest and the greatest assets on the website.
Make sure you follow up until you get a confirmation from people.
Yes, I, I uploaded, I commented, whatever.
Because again, these are customers, they know the product, they like the product.
It's just that they need to tell the world that they actually do, you know, chat is your friend on social media.
Here's a pro tip.
You can figure out who's online and instead of blasting everybody, you go after people that are online.
So it's a pro tip, right?
Try and get some pr.
I think that's, that's very cool because some folks would, especially smaller media would usually just write something up.
So that's kind of neat because again, like, to some people it's like it's Product Hunt.
You know, it's like it's a, it's a marketplace for like enthusiasts and tiny group of people.
But then some folks are like, wow, you know, it's Product Hunt.
And if you look at YC companies, Michael, who is now leading yc, he's always launching them, hunting them.
You see Reid Huffman launching his latest thing on Product Hunt and he was active there, responding.
You can see, like I said, Dharmesh, CTO of HubSpot and then founder, majority stakeholder of HubSpot.
You know, we all know HubSpot upvotedly, Delta.
And I was like, what?
You know, so what I'm trying to say, like, people are there.
So try and get some PR and constantly monitor social media.
Make sure you have support, chat live and keep monitoring it.
Like people expect you to respond instantaneously.
In all honesty, if you're to do this right, there's no sleep that night.
It's 24, you know, 24 hours, get it done, then you go and sleep and be happy.

Omer (36:51.510)
Does the launch always happen, happen at midnight on Pacific time?
Did you say always?

Vedran Rasic (36:55.110)
Always, yeah.
That's when the new day starts.
Yeah.

Omer (36:57.750)
So for the first eight hours, your friends in Pacific time zone are not really that useful.
Right.
You need friends in Europe to, to really make this work.

Vedran Rasic (37:06.550)
Right.
But it makes sense.
Right, But I don't know why, like, there's, there's a ton of these masterclasses on Product Hunt.
Like a ton of people talking about stuff and giving you checklist and it's good, it's useful.
But actually this one about time zones, like, nobody ever said.
And I, like, I'm not going to say I pioneered it, but, like, I'm definitely the one that put emphasis on it because it's just smart, right?
Like, you just start with people that are awake and on their computers.

Omer (37:30.160)
All right.
And then campaign is over.
Post campaign.
What are some things that we want to do just to make sure that we're wrapping things up correctly?

Vedran Rasic (37:38.400)
The most important thing.
Well, share your journey and thank everybody.
Just do what's natural, what's logical to do next.
So thank everybody.
Make sure you publish the results if it was bad, postmortem, if it was good.
Share your wins.
And we live in a community where everything is a 24, 7 show.
So make sure you share screenshots, you share the wins, if there are any.
Make sure you give shout out to everybody and keep the momentum going, keep riding.
That momentum usually takes so that the day of the launch, the next day, and then let's say a week to two weeks is when you're still getting traffic from Prada Hunt.
You get a ton of upvotes.
You keep getting upvotes throughout the time and people will still leave reviews and comments.
And so this is something you definitely want to engage on.
You want to reply to each and every person.
This is my way of saying thank you by spending my time on people that helped us.
So that's.
That's your next 48 hours, basically, right.

Omer (38:37.610)
In Masterclass, you also talk about some tools that people might want to use to help them run a successful campaign.
We talked about ship and paying for that because of, you know, the reasons we already talked about.
What are the other tools that you would recommend that people make use of to.
To get the most out of a campaign?

Vedran Rasic (38:56.090)
Most of this guys is, is copy, right?
So make sure, you know, if you're not a good copywriter, make sure you find one.
This is a pure marketing copywriting Thing So just like try and really like be on the ball there.
So for that like what I use, I use Grammarly obviously to make sure like things are smooth.
I'm not gonna name in all honesty a single, how do you say it?
Like GPT3 robo writer.
Because there's like dozens.

Omer (39:21.880)
There's like too many.

Vedran Rasic (39:22.920)
There's like millions of them.
So use any like see which ones you like.
But like try and like, you know, to get you going.
That might be useful for video.
Don't overcomplicate it.
Like, I mean like you have a home studio.
I have a home studio in Europe and in Canada.
So get a good camera, 4K camera.
Use zoom to record, use imovie to edit.
Like everything is free.
Post it on YouTube.
Like use that as an intro video.
Canva for design, you know, like you need designs and like I do everything.
Like my wife, she's a professional designer and you know, she does things in Canva for me, like when I need some quick stuff.
And again, it's not about the tool, it's about actually the principles and what do you know what you're doing, right?
Like it's, it's that easy.
So there's, there's actually a free.
Well, not free but how do you say the, the lifetime tool that you can buy for sending emails out.
It's, it's called Sandfox.
It's an appsumo.
It's their product, super lean on product that you can use to send newsletters out.
They built it on top of sendgrid.
So use that.
Just warm it up like a month before, two months before.
Make sure you don't go to spam, like do all the checks, you know, obviously Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook are your friends.
For example.
I stopped using Facebook for, for friends and family like some five, 10 years ago.
I guess it's all about business.
I mean they're taking my data and also I'm helping my businesses.
So you know, it's a win, win.
Same thing for LinkedIn.
Make sure you have your early community there.
Those would be some of the tools that I would, I would use.

Omer (40:56.210)
Okay, great.
Not Lead Delta.
Can you give me an example of like how somebody could use that on LinkedIn to help them with a campaign.

Vedran Rasic (41:04.150)
That's a good one.
I purposefully didn't want to promote Lead Delta.

Omer (41:06.870)
I know, There we go.

Vedran Rasic (41:07.870)
I appreciate you for that.
But so listen, Lead Delta helps with your first degree connections, right?
And so when I launched something important to me such as like a product hunt, a full Product launch.
Well, guess what?
I'm going to use Lead Delta to bulk message my, my connections about it.
It's almost like you can treat it almost like as a newsletter but more like personal, more individual and again, you have to be super clear what you're trying to do.
So like 1, 2, 3, that's it.
No more than that.
So I already have pre built tags for my, for my Lead Delta for example.
I have my customers, I have my product hunters who usually support me, like you know, things like that.
And then I go to the Delta inbox, I filter for these and it's just chat, chat, chat, you know, back and forth, back and forth and I make sure the customers know that we're alive.
So that helps me quite a bit.
Like I get that done in like 10 minutes and then it's just a conversation.
It's as simple as that.
Cool.

Omer (41:59.280)
Okay, great.
Well, I think we covered a lot today.
If we wanted to go deeper we could.
If we had an extra eight hours, we don't.
So thank you for doing a great job at taking us through that process and I think giving everyone some very valuable insights into how to think about approaching and setting up a campaign.
What you should be doing, the clarity of the objectives, I think that was super important because if you get that wrong, everything else is kind of a waste of time.
What to do before the campaign, how to actually run the campaign and some of the pro tips that you shared about, you know, where it makes sense.
Like if you don't have the supporters, you probably are wasting a bunch of time on a campaign.
So maybe think about how to go recruit those people first before you think about doing something on Product hunt.
Now if people want to just check out the masterclass and just get all the details, where should they go?

Vedran Rasic (42:51.080)
The link is vedved.gumro.com so check that out.
It's the, it's a popular tool for, for these courses.
So again, vet.gumroad.com and obviously you can find me on LinkedIn, on Twitter, just type in veteranresage.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to pop up relatively unique name.
Relatively.
So do find me there and I'm happy, you know, just feel free to DM me and I'll come back to you with the exact link which you'll provide probably in the outputs.

Omer (43:19.450)
Yeah, we'll include the links in the show notes and if people want to check out Lead Delta they go to leaddelta.com as well.
All right, great.
Thanks man.
This has been really helpful I learned a few things about Product hunt just from this conversation, so appreciate that.
And we're going to follow up and chat later and we're going to talk about Lead Delta and the story and your background with Auto Close and how you're now building this business, which is bootstrapped and profitable.
So that's always good stuff to talk about.
But for now, thank you for making the time and look forward to speaking with you soon.

Vedran Rasic (43:51.590)
Omar, this was, this was a pleasure.
You have an awesome community and I'm so happy to be part of it.
Thank you so much.

Omer (43:57.190)
Thanks so much.
Cheers.