Ryan Hoover
Thousands of new products launch each year, but very few make it. Plus, we play a made up game called “What would you rather upvote?” Join us.
Career Skills
Transitioning into venture capital can be achieved by 'doing the job before having the job' through memos and fantasy portfolios.
"There's many different ways to invest. There's, you know, angel investing is one... there's scouting... there's SPVs... raising a fund... one thing you can also do is just like pretend angel invest......"
The guest provides significant insight into the 'why' and 'when' of raising venture capital, the trade-offs of being on the 'venture treadmill,' and alternative paths like bootstrapping or delaying in
"I do spend time, ironically, like challenging founders sometimes when they're thinking about raising or thinking about an idea to- to not raise."
Growth Skills
Early monetization provides operational flexibility and validates the business model even if growth is the primary goal.
"Another regret, another thing I would've changed is I would've- I would've actually tried to monetize and generated revenue sooner... what I really should've done is dedicated maybe 10% of our focus o..."
Hiring & Teams Skills
When evaluating early-stage founders, the quality of their product thinking and insight-gathering process is more important than the current idea.
"It might be less about me evaluating the- the- the market need for this particular idea, but it's what's the thought process and how did this founder come to these product ideas and these insights. An..."
Leadership Skills
Founders must overcome the urge to control every detail to allow the company and themselves to scale.
"Delegation is- is a classic founder challenge. You know, I- I'm just generally a controlling person. That's something I'm working on. And it's really hard sometimes when I have such strong opinions, a..."
Marketing Skills
Product launches serve multiple strategic goals beyond just customer acquisition, including recruiting, fundraising, and team morale.
"Launch sometimes doesn't help with that, but there are many other reasons why you might wanna launch. So, customer acquisition one, to get the word out. Another can be recruiting. So, by, you know, sh..."
Effective Product Hunt launches rely on human-centric copy and visual storytelling through the gallery.
"Some of the things that I've noticed that make a big difference is we've already talked about the tagline copy, that goes to, not only the post, but also the maker. Usually people tend to add like som..."
Product Management Skills
Horizontal expansion is often harder than deepening a vertical focus, especially for community-based products.
"One- one regret is we should not have tried to expand horizontally. We should've just focused entirely vertically and- and served the tech community, you know, better and- and with more things, which..."
A 'problem journal' helps separate the observation of friction from the rush to find a solution.
"I used to write like a problem journal. Like just when things annoyed me or when things were like less efficient, I would write it down as like a note. And I didn't try to solve it. I didn't- didn't s..."
The guest discusses specific frameworks for finding new ideas, including observing technology shifts, consumer behavior shifts, and the 'Why Now' analysis.
"What new thing can you build today that couldn't be built yesterday? And so, there's- there's a bunch of categories around there, like Web3, AI."