Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of building in public.
Product Hunt
Ryan Hoover considered building in public to be core to the Product Hunt ethos. He had been aware of, and had documented, others who had been building their products in public. He used some of those strategies when he was exploring ideas for Product Hunt. He shared more about the people that inspired him at Startup Storytelling.
Ryan first shared the idea of building in public at Why you should build your product in public. In that post, Ryan shared how building in public helped Product Hunt improve their comment system.
Making Product Hunt
He documented the journey at Making Product Hunt. This case study included including tweets, photos, and emails. It showed how:
- Ryan got hundreds of subscribers to a newsletter after posting about the idea on Quibb
- How he got feedback from his network
- The design mockups for Product Hunt
After the launch, the Product Hunt team started to include the community in the build in public process. A lot of the marketing strategies featured in the article would be considered community management. However, members of the community starting building their own products in public by documenting the launches.