S1E12 - Hitting #1 on ProductHunt with no Marketing team with Robin Singhvi

What is Product Hunt? And why is it important to your B2B Saas? Becoming the number one searched product is not a walk in the park. Growing visibility of your product is crucial to the growth of your B2B SaaS business. One of the best ways to achieve this high visibility is by leveraging the networks of other sites. In today’s episode, we host Robin Singhvi, the founder of SmartCue. Robin is a product hunt expert, and in this episode, he will teach us some tricks and hacks for having your product rank number one without a marketing team.  Why you should listen to Robin – He has been part of many startups, which all had exits. Robin is also well-traveled and experienced, having lived in the US, India, and Europe. Singularly, he managed to rank #1 on Product Hunt without the help of a marketing team. What is Product Hunt? – Robin speaks of Product Hunt as a distribution channel, like LinkedIn, email, affiliate marketing and sites like Reddit. However, Product Hunt gives you almost instant visibility to thousands of people. As a result, your business can get the attention of potential investors much faster, as well as increase revenue. Why SaaS companies need to list on Product Hunt – SaaS companies stand to benefit greatly from Product Hunt in terms of increased visibility and fast and valuable user product. In addition, Product Hunt allows for effective testing of your product positioning. Why ranking number 1 on Product Hunt matters – Ranking number one on Product Hunt greatly benefits a SaaS business. It gives the company high credibility with other SaaS companies seeking to affiliate with the business. It can also bring more traffic, leads, signups, partnerships, and investors. Common mistakes when launching on Product Hunt – Robin observes that most companies often treat their product launch as an after-thought as opposed to being part of the plan from the word go. Given product launch on the site is highly competitive, it is necessary to plan ahead by engaging with the community. Also, some companies lack authenticity and thus force things without a working strategy that entails building awareness. Strategies for launching on Product Hunt – Our guest expert advises a startup to utilize 60 days pre-launch to get things in order. This period should go into building a community and awareness. Leveraging communication channels and testing product positioning, among other go-to-market strategies, is important.   Key Time codes (0:30) Introduction of today’s topic and guest expert (1:34) Why you should listen to Robin (2:34) What is Product Hunt (3:15) Why SaaS companies need to list on Product Hunt (4:00) Why ranking number 1 on Product Hunt matters (6:35) Common mistakes when launching on Product Hunt (8:32) Strategies for launching on Product Hunt (10:40) Recommendations for pre-launch (13:10­) Best practices during the actual launch on Product Hunt (15:55) How he landed one of the best hunters for his launch (17:21) Things to do post-launch (19:55) About his next product launch (22:10) Advice to startups with 10k MRR (23:50) Advice to businesses with 1M ARR (26:40) Robin’s contact information