Learnings from our launch - is PH now more about a reputation leaderboard than real feedback?

Here’s what we learned from launching our AI visibility checker on Product Hunt (it audits how well ChatGPT, Claude, and other LLMs understand your business).

• Ranked #21

• Gained 53 followers, ±40 people upvoted

• Decent waitlist signups for our upcoming full product (https://causo.ai/)

• The real lesson: it’s about who you can rally, not what you built.

New accounts don’t count. You need people with active, aged accounts. We had about 40 people upvote, but only verified accounts mattered for ranking. Our friends and supporters who previously didn't have a PH account but legitimately wanted to support us didn't count.

Only top 14 products get real visibility. The mobile app literally only shows the top 14. Everyone else is invisible to most users. Organic discovery below that is basically nonexistent.

The first 4 hours are everything. We spread our amplification efforts throughout the day, which was a mistake. We should have front-loaded the effort - that's fully on us.

PH users aren’t necessarily your users. Some people upvoted without trying the product. A few didn’t realize typing their email gets them the full report. My Linkedin DMs are flooded with people trying to sell upvotes. The platform mechanics matter more than the actual product quality for ranking.

To have a real shot at top 5, you probably need 1,000+ upvotes. That means 100+ committed supporters with warmed-up accounts, ready to go at launch time. But the question is then - is this still the best platform to receive real feedback and be discovered by new users?

Very glad we launched this smaller tool first to understand the mechanics before we launch our full product.