Unexpected Product Hunt Launch: Lessons from a Premature Debut

On May 4th, we've launched our solution on Hacker News. This was our first step going public and a call to Product Managers willing to provide feedback. A dozen or comments and couple signups came in - we got really pumped up by the support we received from the community!
A few hours later, we started to see dozens of signups popping on the platform! Our website traffic was blowing up! 

To be honest, we could not believe it. 
Don't get us wrong - we've been working hard to build our app, and we know it addresses a lot of the challenges Product Managers are facing today. 

1. Because these are problems we've met in the past years.
2. Because we have conducted dozens of user research interviews to validate our idea.
   

But still, the sudden traction felt disproportionate, considering we had posted only on Hacker News and expected to get 5 to 10 contacts for our user research.

So we started to investigate, just asking people where did they hear about us - and we've quickly unveiled the mystery! 

It turns out someone had hunted ProdCamp and posted our solution on Product Hunt. By this time, we had more than 250 up-votes, many positive comments, and about 100 signups. 

At this point, we had really mixed feelings. First, we were truly honored, and excited - when hard work and dedication pay, it is a unique feeling. 

But we also got a bit frustrated since it basically disrupted our official launch, and we felt this wasn't the solution we wanted to show to the public.

As a starter, we weren't even able to bill customers. Several times after our first call with new users, people were like, "ok, this is great! So what is our next step, How do I become a customer?". And we had to reply, "well, you just use it for free now." 

Some users even insisted saying they wouldn't want to use it before they could pay. It was flattering, of course, after all the hard work. 

But the situation was quite awkward, as you can imagine.

We were also working on a new UI experience, entirely redesigning our Roadmap, adding new feedback channels, and a handful of other vital features we were carefully crafting.

See, customer experience excellence is one of our cornerstones - and we just felt like we had accidentally violated this commitment. 

Now, two weeks after, we got more than 200 signups. Many active users and dozens of calls with people continuously validating the challenges we solve and the solutions we bring.

But we know that our actual launch has yet to come! 

The moment we will reveal ProdCamp to the word and start accomplishing our mission. 

Reconnect the Users and the Product with a real Multichannel feedback platform. 

So stay tuned!