I’ve been on Product Hunt for 39 days straight. Not because I love gamifying streak counters, but because I learned early on that if you show up on launch day as a stranger, the platform will treat you like one.
This is the second post in my Product Hunt launch series. The first one covers how I’m using AI to plan the actual launch. This one is about everything that needs to happen before that, the groundwork that most people skip.
I came across a Product Hunt discussion thread with advice from founders who had just gone through their own launches. Some of it was the most useful pre-launch advice I found. I’ll share the key points throughout this post.
Your Account Age Matters More Than You Think
Product Hunt’s algorithm pays attention to who is upvoting you. Upvotes from active, established community members carry more weight than upvotes from accounts created the day of your launch.
This is why creating your account two days before you go live is a mistake. The platform can tell the difference between a real community member and someone who signed up just to support a product on launch day.
I created my account weeks before we had any launch date set. That gave me time to actually become part of the community, not just show up and ask for support.
Be Active. Every Day.
Once you have an account, use it. Not in a performative way, genuinely.
What that looks like in practice:
- Upvote products you actually find interesting. Not everything, just the ones you’d actually tell someone about.
- Leave real comments. Product Hunt rewards specific, useful comments far more than “great product!” If you have a use case, share it. If you have a question, ask it.
- Browse the daily feed. This takes 5 minutes. You’ll start to understand what launches do well, what copy works, what format the top products use.
I have a 39-day streak right now. It’s not about the streak itself, it’s about what I’ve learned from 39 days of paying attention to what works.
Follow People in Your Space
When you follow someone on Product Hunt, they often follow back. More importantly, your followers get notified when you launch.
Every follower you build before launch day matters. When you go live, your followers get notified automatically. That means before I’ve sent a single message on launch day, the people who followed me on Product Hunt will already see Piwi.ai is live. The more of them there are, the stronger that first wave of support gets.
Building that list takes time. Start now.
Where to find people worth following:
- Look at who comments on products similar to yours
- Check who the top hunters are in your category
- Follow people who leave thoughtful comments in your niche (AI tools, SaaS, document automation in my case)
Set Up a Coming Soon Page
This is something I haven’t done yet, but it’s on my list before launch day.
Product Hunt lets you create a “notify me” page for your product before it officially launches. This means people can subscribe to be notified the moment you go live. Every subscriber is someone who already expressed interest, which is exactly who you want upvoting you in the first hour.
To set one up: go to your Product Hunt dashboard, create a product, and set it to “Coming Soon” status instead of publishing immediately.
Prepare Your Launch Page Content Before Launch Day
One consistent tip I came across and heard from other makers: the first comment from the maker is one of the most important things on your launch page. It’s often the first thing people read after the tagline. It sets the tone for the entire launch.
Don’t write it on launch day when you’re stressed and context-switching between messages, comments, and outreach. Write it in advance. Make it personal. Explain why you built this, not just what it does. That’s what gets people to engage.
The same goes for the demo video. The community advice was clear: don’t make a polished, edited production. Make something that shows there’s a real person behind the product. A founder recording a genuine walkthrough of the product they built is far more compelling than a sleek agency video.
For us, the CEO is recording the demo himself. I’m writing the maker comment. Both are being prepared now, not on launch day.
Divide Your Outreach by Timeframe and Profile
Something I hadn’t thought about until I came across it in the thread: divide the impact of your launch across different timeframes and different types of contacts.
Not everyone in your network is the same. Some people care about the business side, some are technical, some are marketers. They respond to different angles and different messages.
The framework that makes sense for us:
- Closest contacts first (day of launch, first hour): people who already know the product and don’t need context
- Professional network (hours 2 to 4): clear ask, specific and brief
- Community connections (later in the day): people you’ve built relationships with on LinkedIn or PH who understand the space
The goal isn’t to blast everyone at once. It’s to create a steady wave of support through the day, not a spike followed by silence.
Connect with Other Makers
Some of the most useful conversations I’ve had during this pre-launch phase weren’t with potential users, they were with other founders who’ve been through a Product Hunt launch.
I reached out to people in the PH community who had launched recently, asked genuine questions about their experience, and got genuinely useful answers back. Those people are now part of my network. Some of them have already said they’ll support us on launch day.
This isn’t networking in the transactional sense. It’s finding people who understand the process and building real relationships before you need anything from them.
Join the Discussions
Product Hunt has a Discussions section that most people ignore. Don’t ignore it.
It’s where you’ll find threads from people asking for launch advice, looking for beta testers, or sharing what worked for their own launches. Contributing there, even a short, specific response, puts you in front of an audience that’s actively engaged with the platform.
I found one of the most useful pieces of advice for my own launch in a discussion thread from someone who had launched two days earlier. Real-time, honest feedback that I wouldn’t have found in any blog post.
The First 4 Hours Decide Everything
This is the most important thing I learned from the thread, and it came from someone who had just gone through a launch: the top 5 is essentially decided in the first 4 hours.
Here’s how it works. Product Hunt doesn’t show a ranked list immediately. For the first few hours, it’s still shuffling. Around hour 4, the top 5 stabilises. After that, people tend to vote for whatever is already in the top 5, because those are the products they see first.
The implication: if you’re not in the top 5 by hour 4, it’s very hard to get there. One person in the thread shared that even a 40-50 upvote gap after the first four hours was too much to close. Another said a gap of 100 upvotes is basically impossible to recover from, with the exception of products with massive existing audiences.
Everything you do before launch day is designed to make those first four hours count.
If You’re in Europe, You Have an Advantage
Product Hunt launches at 12:01 AM Pacific Time, which is 8-9 AM in Europe (depending on daylight saving time). That’s actually a good position to be in.
When the race starts, you’re awake. Most of your European contacts are awake. You can be active and responding to comments from the very first minute, while US-based teams are still asleep.
The advice from the thread: treat the first 4 hours as the critical window, and plan your outreach to happen exactly then. Not hours before, not by midday when the race is already decided.
Most People Will Forget. Remind Them Anyway.
You tell your supporters the launch date. They say great, they’ll be there. And then on launch day, most of them have completely forgotten.
This is normal. No one remembers your launch date except you and your team. The fix is simple: tell people well in advance, and then send a reminder on launch day. Not as a mass message, as a personal note. “Hey, we’re live today, would mean a lot if you could take a look.”
That reminder is not annoying. It’s necessary.
That’s why I started building that list of real contacts weeks before the launch. People who I’ve had real conversations with are far more likely to actually remember to follow through when I reach out on the day.
That’s why I started building 39 days ago. Launch day isn’t the start. It’s the result.
This is part 2 of my Product Hunt launch series. Part 1 covers how I’m using AI to plan the launch strategy. Part 3 will be the honest post-launch breakdown — results, what worked, and what I’d do differently.
Following along? Connect with me on LinkedIn or find me on Product Hunt.