![]() It allowed me to validate some assumptions very quickly and observe real user behavior without a single line of code. The “20-minute Linkydink MVP” was a great starting point. Yes! Eight days later, we launched Product Hunt. ![]() Pleased, I reached out to my good friend and designer/developer Nathan Bashaw to get his thoughts: I started to look into Sacha Greif’s Telescope, an open-source app for creating your own Hacker News or Reddit-like community. I wanted something sooner to test my next series of assumptions. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any experience with these frameworks and while assured in my idea, I was still operating with many hypotheses of what the product could be. Some of my engineering friends recommended Sinatra or Ruby on Rails. I began to research technology to build a complete product. ![]() The results of the MVP gave me confidence in the idea: I had found something compelling. Successful companies don’t start up overnight they are founded upon years of experience and help from others that must be earned. Years of blogging, relationship building, and projects like Startup Edition have given me an audience and network of supporters. Granted, I didn’t launch the MVP with a blank slate. It’s still very early but these signs of traction are encouraging, especially considering the minimalism of the “Linkydink MVP” and my (intentional) lack of marketing of the product. Even more encouraging were the numerous unsolicited emails and in-person conversations expressing their love and support of the project. Within two weeks, over 170 people had subscribed to product discoveries from 30 hand-picked contributors, consisting of startup founders, VCs, and prominent bloggers. Wrote this idea off at first when I first read about it but after checking out some of the recommendations (Peak, Sqwiggle, Calm, and Cycloramic) I’m hooked. Love how you have all kinds of VCs subscribed! Build an angel list syndicate off this list and disrupt them (us) -).Īnd then from Talton Figgins, product support lead, Disqus: I wrote a quick blog post, announced the project on Quibb and tweeted. I logged into Linkydink, created a group, and invited a few of my startup friends to contribute. “This is perfect!” I thought, mentally fist-pumping with excitement. Each day, the collection of posts are emailed to the group. Simply create a group and invite people to share links with other contributors and subscribers. After noodling over a few ideas, I was reminded of Linkydink, a link-sharing tool by the friendly folks at Makeshift. In a burst of motivation to make Product Hunt a reality, I brainstormed ways to build a quick MVP to see if people cared to share and discover products. After unloading my MacBook, I peeked at my to-do list to find something I jotted the previous week: It was unusually chilly that morning in San Francisco when I walked to my office, Philz Coffee. How could I bring it to market sooner to test my hypothesis? The 20-Minute MVP I wasn’t about to spend dozens of my nights and weekends building something no one cared about. Although confident in my idea, I didn’t really know if anyone else would use a service like this. Even a basic Ruby on Rails app would take me weeks to build. But when I came up with the idea, I lamented the amount of work needed to build the first version of Product Hunt. The concept was simple: to build a community for product people to share, discover, and discuss new and interesting products.
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