Ask a founder where they are launching and nine times out of ten the answer is Product Hunt, said in the tone of someone naming the only option. Then launch day arrives, the product lands at number eleven, a few hundred people look at it, and the conclusion is that launching does not work.
Launching works. The venue was wrong, or the product was right for the venue but arrived with nothing the venue rewards. These are two different failures and they have different fixes.
A founder can launch a product on Product Hunt, Hacker News, the specific subreddit where their users already complain about the problem, an industry newsletter, their own audience on X or LinkedIn, and the smaller startup directories. Each venue rewards a different thing: Product Hunt rewards a clean visual first impression, Hacker News rewards a technically interesting story told plainly, and a subreddit rewards someone who was already a member. ShipTeaser covers the visual half of that, turning your product URL into a 15-second silent teaser you can attach wherever you land.
The venues, and what each one actually rewards
The mistake is treating these as interchangeable slots for the same announcement. They have different populations, different tolerances for marketing language, and different definitions of a good post.
| Venue | What it rewards | What it punishes |
|---|---|---|
| Product Hunt | A clean visual first impression and a maker who answers every comment all day. | Arriving with no assets and no audience to seed the first hour. |
| Hacker News (Show HN) | A technically interesting decision, explained plainly, by the person who made it. | Marketing voice. Anything that reads like a press release dies in minutes. |
| A niche subreddit | A member who has been around for months and is solving a problem the sub complains about. | A first-time poster promoting something. Removed, often within the hour. |
| An industry newsletter | A concrete story the writer can retell to their list without doing research. | A generic pitch sent to fifty newsletters at once. |
| Your own X or LinkedIn | Consistency before the launch. The launch post performs like your last ten posts. | Going quiet for six months and reappearing to announce something. |
| Startup directories | Nothing. They are cheap, permanent backlinks, not a launch moment. | Treating them as a strategy instead of an afternoon of admin. |
Every venue has a currency, and none of them accept enthusiasm.
Product Hunt is a visual venue
Product Hunt is worth doing, but it is worth understanding what it is. It is a feed of cards, scrolled quickly by people who are not looking for your category. The gallery, the thumbnail and the first line of the tagline do almost all of the work, and the maker comment does the rest.
That is why launching there with a screenshot and a paragraph is a waste of a slot. A short silent video in the gallery is the single highest-leverage asset on the page, because it is the only thing that shows the product moving. The full playbook for that specific day lives on our Product Hunt launch page.
Hacker News is an honesty venue
Show HN operates on inverted rules. Everything that helps on Product Hunt hurts here. A polished tagline reads as suspicious, a marketing adjective gets called out in the first comment, and a product with no interesting engineering story behind it simply gets ignored.
What works is a plain title, a first comment written by the person who built it, and one genuinely interesting decision: the thing you tried that did not work, the constraint you chose, the part that is harder than it looks. If you cannot name that decision, you do not have a Show HN post, and posting anyway costs you the chance to do it later with something better.
Communities are a membership venue
The subreddit where your users complain about the problem you solve is, in raw conversion terms, better than every other venue on this list. It is also the one you cannot parachute into. Moderators remove first-time promotional posts, and the members who do not remove it will remember.
The workable version is unglamorous and slow: join months before you need it, answer questions with no link attached, and by the time you launch you are a member who built something rather than a stranger selling something. Nobody wants to hear that the strategy takes three months. It takes three months.
Sequence them, do not fire them all at once
Founders tend to compress every venue into a single Tuesday, which wastes most of them. A launch that lands in one place gives you material for the next: a number, a piece of feedback, a first customer, a screenshot of something going well.
- Your own audience first. It costs nothing, it is the warmest room you have, and it tells you which sentence lands before strangers see it.
- The community second. Now you have one testimonial or one number, which is what makes a community post a story rather than an ad.
- Product Hunt third, with the assets and the early supporters you now actually have.
- Show HN when you have an engineering story, which may be never, and that is fine.
- Newsletters and directories continuously, as background admin rather than events.
That sequencing is the same argument as treating the week after launch as a campaign rather than a day, and the mechanics of the channel posts themselves are covered in how to launch on X and how to launch on LinkedIn.
One asset has to survive every venue
The practical constraint of a sequenced launch is that you cannot commission a new asset for each stop. Product Hunt wants a gallery video, X wants a native square clip, LinkedIn wants something that reads muted, and the community post wants something that does not look like an ad.
That is one asset in three ratios, not five productions. ShipTeaser generates a 15-second, 1080p silent teaser from your live product page in 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16, so the same launch asset travels across every venue without a new brief each time. The cadence argument behind that is in video content for startups.
A launch is not a day you pick. It is a list of rooms you enter in the right order.
FAQ
Where should a founder launch a product besides Product Hunt?
Hacker News through Show HN, the niche subreddit or Slack community where the problem is already discussed, an industry newsletter, your own audience on X or LinkedIn, and the smaller startup directories. Each rewards something different, so a product that lands badly on Product Hunt can still land well on Show HN, and the reverse is just as common.
Can you launch the same product in several places?
Yes, and you should, but sequenced rather than simultaneous. Launching everywhere on one day means every venue gets the same untested message with no proof attached. Launching in sequence means each stop produces a number, a quote or a customer that makes the next post stronger.
Is Product Hunt still worth it?
It is worth a day if you arrive prepared. Product Hunt is a fast visual feed, so the gallery, the thumbnail and the maker comment carry the launch, and a short silent video in the gallery is the highest-leverage asset on the page. It is not worth it as a substitute for having an audience, because the first hour depends on people who already know you.
How do you launch on Reddit without getting removed?
By being a member first. Moderators remove promotional posts from accounts with no history in the sub, so the only reliable approach is to join well before you need it, answer questions without linking your product, and post the launch as someone the community recognises. There is no shortcut version of this that works.
Do you need a different video for each launch venue?
No, you need one video in the right ratios. Product Hunt galleries suit 16:9, feed posts suit 1:1, and stories suit 9:16, but the content can be identical. ShipTeaser renders the same 15-second silent teaser in all three from a single product URL, which is what makes launching in five places affordable.