S1E12 – Hitting #1 on Product Hunt with no Marketing team.

What is Product Hunt? And why is it important to your Saas? Becoming the number one searched product is not a walk in the park. The growing visibility of your product is crucial to the growth of your B2B SaaS business. One of the best ways to achieve this high visibility is by leveraging the networks of other sites.

In today’s episode, we host Robin Singhvi, the founder of SmartCue. Robin is a product hunt expert, and in this episode, he will teach us some tricks and hacks for having your product rank number one without a marketing team. 

Why you should listen to Robin – He has been part of many startups, which all had exits. Robin is also well-traveled and experienced, having lived in the US, India, and Europe. Singularly, he managed to rank #1 on Product Hunt without the help of a marketing team.

What is Product Hunt? – Robin speaks of Product Hunt as a distribution channel, like LinkedIn, email, affiliate marketing and sites like Reddit. However, Product Hunt gives you almost instant visibility to thousands of people. As a result, your business can get the attention of potential investors much faster, as well as increase revenue.

Why SaaS companies need to list on Product Hunt – SaaS companies stand to benefit greatly from Product Hunt in terms of increased visibility and fast and valuable user product. In addition, Product Hunt allows for effective testing of your product positioning.

Why ranking number 1 on Product Hunt matters – Ranking number one on Product Hunt greatly benefits a SaaS business. It gives the company high credibility with other SaaS companies seeking to affiliate with the business. It can also bring more traffic, leads, signups, partnerships, and investors.

Common mistakes when launching on Product Hunt – Robin observes that most companies often treat their product launch as an after-thought as opposed to being part of the plan from the word go. Given product launch on the site is highly competitive, it is necessary to plan ahead by engaging with the community. Also, some companies lack authenticity and thus force things without a working strategy that entails building awareness.

Strategies for launching on Product Hunt – Our guest expert advises a startup to utilize 60 days pre-launch to get things in order. This period should go into building a community and awareness. Leveraging communication channels and testing product positioning, among other go-to-market strategies, is important.

Recommendations for pre-launch: He stresses on the need to collaborate with the community and build on their feedback. It helps to spread the message on other people’s networks yourself or through affiliate partners.

Best practices during actual launch on Product Hunt – Robin underscores the crucial role of a product hunter during launch. However, he points out that the launch can still be highly successful without the help of a hunter. You need to contact people who have done product launches on Product Hunt before and integrate them into your community. Robin also argues against paying individuals for the purpose of promotion. You should also make sure to engage with audience comments. Timing of the launch is also crucial, advisably early Monday in order to enjoy the longest visibility and potential to be the product of the week.

How he landed one of the best hunters for his launch – Robin admits that he approached Kevin William David and requested to launch his product. He advises that you should take a leap of faith and reach out to a professional for help. This is especially crucial because leveraging the experience of people who have done it before often gives you an added advantage during product launch on Product Hunt.

About his next product launch – Robin says he will employ a different go-to-market strategy from his previous one for the scheduled product launch mid-next month. Now he has an efficient marketing team that will help with better product awareness efforts, customer attraction and feedback handling, and traffic conversion.

Advice to startups with 10k MRR – The focus for early-stage founders should be on building on the product foundation and positioning. Robin hails Product Hunt as a source of unbiased, critical, helpful feedback and Advice to understand your target audience and problem statement. You should engage with the community and test your messaging and feedback for the ICP. He admits that the feedback helped them to pivot much earlier.

Advice to businesses with 1M ARR – Businesses with 1M ARR should leverage Product Hunt as a base for refining their go-to-market strategy. The business should build brand awareness and manage and nurture leads. Also, he advises that the business should refine its processes and systems with the goal of increasing the ARR even further.

Listen on Spotify:

Key Time codes

• (0:30) Introduction of today’s topic and guest expert
• (1:34) Why you should listen to Robin
• (2:34) What is Product Hunt
• (3:15) Why SaaS companies need to list on Product Hunt
• (4:00) Why ranking number 1 on Product Hunt matters
• (6:35) Common mistakes when launching on Product Hunt
• (8:32) Strategies for launching on Product Hunt
• (10:40) Recommendations for pre-launch
• (13:10­) Best practices during the actual launch on Product Hunt
• (15:55) How he landed one of the best hunters for his launch
• (17:21) Things to do post-launch
• (19:55) About his next product launch
• (22:10) Advice to startups with 10k MRR
• (23:50) Advice to businesses with 1M ARR
• (26:40) Robin’s contact information

Materials & relevant links:

• Guide to launch on Product Hunt by Robin
• Clickup Checklist when launching on Product Hunt
• Product Hunt launch SmartCue

Introduction to Robin Singhvi

00:30 – Joran Hofman
Welcome back to another episode of The Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast. Our goal with this podcast is to help you grow your B2B SaaS. Growing your saas starts with visibility, and getting your software known to your audience. There are many ways to do this and today we’re going to talk about leveraging the network of other sites and in particular today Product Hunt. 

Product Hunt is a site where you can find new products in tech. Your product get hunted by somebody and then people can vote for you. Becoming the number one product of the day can get you a lot of visibility and new signups to become product number one isn’t easy. We’re going to talk with Robin Sinkvi today, who was able to rank number one without a marketing team. He’s the founder of SmartCue, a platform that allows you to create interactive demos. Before he founded, SmartQ had been part of many startups, and a fun fact about the startups he worked at, they all had an exit. 

01:20  – Joran Hofman
He is currently living in the US, his roots are India and also lived in Europe. You can say that he has seen a startup life in many parts of the world. Without further ado, welcome to the show, Robin. 

01:29  – Robin Singhvi
That was quite the introduction Joran. Flattered and I appreciate you having me on the podcast. 

01:34  – Joran Hofman
No worries. When I listen to other podcasts, I always ask myself the question, why should I listen to this person? That’s why I always start with this question really directly. Why should people listen to you today in your own words? 

01:46  – Robin Singhvi
Okay, I’m the founder of SmartCue. As you highlighted, like most startups, we’ve had our ups and downs, we raise funds, we built a team, took a gutsy call and pivoted when we saw the original vision wasn’t playing out as expected. Launched the new product and now seeing some great traction. Hey, our customers seem to love us now. I don’t know if that qualifies me as someone folks should listen to, but I think we’ve done okay. I’m pretty much a one man army plus maybe a couple of interns and we became a product of the day on Product Hunt. As a single person, I hope with that I can share some stories that hopefully the listeners can resonate with. 

What is Product Hunt?

02:30  – Joran Hofman
Nice. We haven’t launched ourself on Product Hunt, so I’m definitely going to make notes today. Let’s start with the basics. I quickly mentioned what Product Hunt is, but if we dive a bit deeper, what is Product Hunt, in your words? 

02:42  – Robin Singhvi
When you think of Product Hunt, in marketing terms, it really is a distribution channel, just like LinkedIn, your emails or affiliate marketing, like Reddit and even your website. The only difference is with product hunt, you’re getting in front of tens of thousands of folks pretty much instantly. Depending on your startup and your industry, that can potentially be life changing, whether it is getting to PMF sooner, getting a bunch of revenue, or even getting the attention of investors. 

03:15 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, and I think one question I wanted to ask as well, like, why should SaaS companies care about listing themselves on product hunt? As you mentioned, it is a really nice distribution channel to get yourself out there. 

03:25  – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, for SaaS companies especially, it’s like the Oscars of the tech world, right? It’s a stage where your product gets this crazy spotlight and being noticed can lead to a ton of benefits, of course, like increased visibility, but also really fast and valuable customer or user feedback, which you would otherwise take so much more time to actually get. Right. It’s just a great way to test the waters, test your product positioning and all of those factors and it just allows you to accelerate all of those activities for your product. 

What does Product Hunt bring to your business? 

04:00  – Joran Hofman
We are going to talk about today how to rank number one on product hunt without a marketing team. I guess before we get into that, what does it actually bring you? You already mentioned customer feedback. Test the waters. If we look at, for example, traffic sign-ups, paid clients, like, what does ranking number one actually give you? 

04:18  – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, especially as a SaaS company, I think you get a lot of bragging rights. If you’re selling to other SaaS companies, ranking number one on product hunt can be a great source of establishing credibility, just enterprise customers. Think of G2 rankings. A lot of other SaaS companies will talk to you or will be more inclined to talk to you. If you can show and prove that you actually did really well on product. It means more potential customers, means partnerships, and especially if you rank one, it could also invite a lot of investor interest, because for investors specifically, a lot of the times, it means that you don’t just know how to build a great product, but that you also have the chops as an organization to build an audience, which is generally the two key things when you’re launching a startup. Can you build a great product and can you distribute? 

05:10 – Robin Singhvi
I think those are two key things that you can do when you rank high or number one on product hunt. Of course you get a great spike in terms of visitors to your site, potential sign-ups and things like that. The way I’ve tried to think of it is that it’s a lot more long-term, right? While you can get quite a few short term benefits, you have to really think of the long term so even now I get emails from people that, hey, I found you on Product Hunt and I saw that you were the product of the day. Not just that people are like, I saw the great engagement that you have on your product hunt launch because of which I’m coming to you and I’d like to do whatever, whether it be a customer, whether it’s a partnership or investors. 

05:55 – Joran Hofman
That’s interesting because you always see these posts on LinkedIn when they say like, a product launch will give you really short-term benefits as and give you a spike, but for you as well, like, longer term it does still bring you sign ups and brings you leads basically. 

06:10  – Robin Singhvi
It does, for sure. Even now, when we look at our Google Analytics, product hunt still is one of those traffic sources for us. Even from an SEO perspective, if you really think about it, I’m not an SEO expert. They always talk about having domain authority and domain ranking and stuff like that and having that referral or backlink or whatever you call it, an SEO to your website or to specific parts of your website goes a long way before. 

What are the most common mistakes when launching on Product Hunt?

06:36  – Joran Hofman
We, I guess, talk about the strategy, and how you get yourself ranked number one. Let’s look at the other side. You’ve probably seen a lot of people or a lot of companies launching on Product hunt. What is the most common mistake companies making while launching on product hunt? 

06:49 – Robin Singhvi
Product hunt launching is very competitive, right? A lot of SaaS companies want to launch theirs. I think the one thing that I’ve seen is a lot of folks seem to treat their product hunt launch as more of an afterthought or just a box to check, right? It’s super competitive and to really succeed, you need to plan ahead. You can’t just throw it on there and then expect things to happen, right? You have to engage with the community, put your best foot forward, and make the most of essentially that moment in the sun that you have, right. 

The other thing that I’ve seen which I think works negatively for a lot of people, is that they tend to just use brute force or try and game the system, pay people for votes and all of that kind of stuff. And it’s interesting. One is, of course, that product hunts themselves, I think, have continually tweaked their process so that authentic products and their marketing efforts are surfaced to the top. 

07:48 – Robin Singhvi
I think it can actually negatively impact your brand as well, if that’s what’s happening, where a lot of folks who are on product under will see that, hey, you’ve got thousands of votes, but you’re down at number six or seven or eight. That kind of tells them that, hey, you’re not doing this right. You’re not like putting in the time and effort to build a community of champions, drive awareness and tell your story and use that to build your strategy and success, eventual success on product hunt. I think it’s very important to do it right and think of the original ethos of product hunt right. To build that community of champions and curious folk and then use that to help you grow as a startup. 

What to do pre-launch for Product Hunt? 

08:32  – Joran Hofman
We talk about do it right, plan ahead, engage with the community. Let’s dive into this. We’re going to talk about the strategy and the process you took to get yourself ranked number one. What did you do before you already mentioned it? Plan ahead. So what does the pre-work actually? 

08:46 – Robin Singhvi
Contain when you decide that you’re going to launch on product? I think in an ideal world, give yourself 60 days. I know that’s not possible for most startups I know. Give yourself at least 30 and use those 30 days as a roadmap leading up to launch. Right. 

The first and most important thing I think that you need to do is build that community and activate those channels. Right? For me, I was very lucky to have a very small, but I think very supportive group of champions that are part of a monthly update I send out about Smart Chain. Months before I said that, hey, I’m going to do this and this is where I need your help. Whether it is promoting or broadcasting my message or even getting help with, hey, is my messaging right, is my positioning right? Are my collaterals using that network and that power of community to ensure that you’re doing the right things, have a clear checklist and a plan of action on what you want to do pre launch, day of launch. 

09:48 – Robin Singhvi
Post also used a bunch of other product and support groups. Of course, our email databases, LinkedIn, Slack and Disport communities were pretty big. We even used our WhatsApp groups and stuff like that. I know WhatsApp is big india. We use all of our family groups and friends groups and whatever to build up that hype around SmartCue. I think just like any other go to market effort, you have to leverage all that you have at your disposal, right, as an.org or as a solo founder like me. 

10:23 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, no, it definitely helps. And I think you already mentioned it. You’re going to make the community part of the launch, so you’re actually asking them to check your collateral and then they also feel part of the launch. Once you go live, it’s not just you as a one man band, but it’s going to be them as well because they’re kind of part of it. 

10:39  – Robin Singhvi
Absolutely. 

10:39  – Joran Hofman
You mentioned all these groups, these things you don’t always know product hunt, and then you think it’s just this channel, but there’s a lot next to it. You have indeed the Facebook group you mentioned. WhatsApp groups? What would you recommend? I guess people to do before launch, like, where should they go and check things out? 

10:57 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, I had the same questions, to be honest, when I launched. Right. What I actually ended up doing is I wrote a blog post and I also created a checklist and click up which we can share in the show notes with people, which has a bunch of these product hunt launch communities and stuff like that. It seems very obvious, but the way to get community to support you is to support the community prior to your launch in all of these groups. Engage with them, support their launch, give them feedback, engage with the stuff that they put out, build that goodwill, and then use tools and processes to ensure that you’re always staying on top and not just drowning in a ton of noise. Yeah, we have a list that I’ve published of, hey, here are the groups that you should join. The cool thing about it is that as soon as you join these groups and if people see that you’re really participating and part of the community, they’ll come back and tell you. 

11:53 – Robin Singhvi
I remember getting DM saying that, hey, I think you’re doing cool. Why don’t you also join these two, three groups and post your message on there? Or they’ll do you one better and be like, hey, what, I love what you’re doing. I actually posted it on your behalf in my other circles. Here’s the link to join that conversation and show people who you are and what you’re trying to build. I think it’s a snowball effect, right? You do the right things, be authentic, engage with your community, and I think it will pay off in spades if you do it right and are true to yourself and the community. 

12:28  – Joran Hofman
Yeah. I think this is also where you need the 30 days, because if you’re just going to go on launch day, you’re going to join the communities, you’re going to add your link, then nothing is going to happen, of course. 

12:36 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah. I think that there’s a very clear correlation between because these communities are not gated, but you see so many people join the Day of launch, they come in and they’re like, hey, we’re launching, this is what we’re doing, please support us. And crickets, right? No one’s really engaging with them. So, yeah, there’s no shortcut for sure to doing well on product. I’m sure it applies to other aspects of building your startup as well. 

What to do on Launch Day?

13:04 – Joran Hofman
Nice. We’re going to have a link towards the list and you created of all the groups to join. This is basically pre launch, but we talk about the day itself, I guess. Any best practices on the actual launch? 

13:17 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, there’s a lot of chatter about whether you should have a hunter or not. For example, on the Day of launch, shout out to Kevin William David, like our hunter, great guy. I think he’s the number two hunter of all time on Product hunt. I’m not 100% sure, but he’s pretty high up there. He was super helpful for us in terms of advice and being patient as I got my act together. Having said that, you don’t need a Hunter to launch on Product Hunt, to be honest, not anymore. You can do it your own as long as you create and execute on that playbook. For us, it was just that were newbies and so having this hunter wasn’t just like there’s hunters out there who are like, okay, send me the link, I’ll launch it and that’s it. I think Kevin has been part of the community for the longest time and so he knows he’ll coach you through it. 

14:09 – Robin Singhvi
So that was great. Yeah, I’m definitely eternally grateful to Kevin. I think that’s one thing doesn’t matter whether you have a hunter or not, but definitely find people who’ve done it before, ask them for their best practices and just again make them part of your community. I may be getting repetitive, but community as you can sense, is a huge part of launching on Product Hunt. Some other things are obviously avoid bots or like paying people to promote you. Definitely anti ethos of product hunt. Also I think their algos are onto that kind of shady stuff. Some of the other things that you can do, like I said, is that engage with every comment on your launch. For sure, the day of launch, basically block off your calendar and it’s all hands on deck and that’s all you are doing, right? Nothing else. Some other, I think table stakes is launch on Mondays at twelve 01:00, a.m. Pacific time

15:02 – Robin Singhvi
It gives you the longest leverage, right? Not just to be the product of the day on Monday itself, but actually you could be product of the week on the end of the week and launching on Monday just gives you that little bit of an edge. Like I said, there’s a whole checklist that I’m happy to share in a playbook that folks can look at and just go through it. I’ll say that I’m sure it’s slightly dated now because we launched September of last year, but I think it’s still a great start and we’re going to update it pretty soon as well because we’re planning another launch, by the way. 

How to find a top hunter?

15:37 – Joran Hofman
Nice for anybody listening, then definitely check them out once they go live. I think these things are nice, right? Like launch on Monday at a specific time. You have to know these kind of small things, but really important things before doing it. You mentioned already find people who’ve done it before. How did you get the number two hunter to actually hunt, for example? 

16:00 – Robin Singhvi
You guys, it’s very interesting. I was like, I have nothing to lose in reaching out to Kevin. William David, he went in with the default understanding that he’s going to say no. I was like, hey, Kevin, I’ve been following you for a long time. This is what we’re doing. We’d love it. If he’d launch us and he said yes, that’s it. There was a cooler story there, but Kevin’s just a great guy. I actually encourage people who are intimidated by that fact. Just reach out. Like his email is public. He’s more than happy to engage with you and launch your product now. I’m sure he gets a ton of people hitting him up every day, but he’s a good guy and I think we’ll be willing to help you out. There’s actually a lot of other folks who do this as well and are very well respected in the product hunt community. 

16:47 – Joran Hofman
Yeah. As you mentioned, you can launch yourself. Of course, if you have people who’ve done it before and who already have that big network, then it is going to help you a lot. 

16:55 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, I think it helps you to avoid the mistakes that other people have potentially made. It allows you to focus on the things that you need to do and get right, as opposed to doing things and realizing that, oh, I shouldn’t have done this. If you have people who’ve done it before, you have that added advantage. 

What to do post-launching on Product Hunt?

17:13 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, definitely makes sense. We had the launch. I guess what happens you mentioned already, engage with everybody, block off your day, make sure you’re going to be on it. If we talk about after the launch, what’s going to happen then? What do you need to do or what maybe things you don’t need to do. 

17:28 – Robin Singhvi
If we think of post-launch, you’re going to definitely see a big spike in your if you do the launch right, you’re going to see a big spike on all of your properties. Whether it’s your website or any of the social properties that you have, you should plan for. How are you going to engage these folks who come on having the right call to actions using your chat bots or whatever to make sure that if you as an individual are not able to engage everyone, you still have a process to get them into your funnel and then are able to reach back out. I think one thing I’ll say is that I think there’s the thrill of launching on product trend and seeing like a lot of traffic, a lot of sign ups and things like that. I think you also have to be very realistic that not all of it is going to be real and real in the sense that not all of them are going to be your target customers. 

18:16 – Robin Singhvi
So it’s okay. I have this phase where I think two weeks after launch, I realized that, oh my God, we got like x thousand people signing up and suddenly our engagement is down in the hundreds. When we actually went in and tried to analyze the data, we realized that a lot of them were just passing by and they’re like, oh, this is cool, let’s check it out. No harm, no foul, but don’t let it get to your head in a good or a bad way. There’s only positive things that will come from it. The cool thing is that the feedback that you will get is generally going to be very it’ll be critical, but it will be supported. It won’t be like nasty. People will come in and give you feedback that you’re like, oh my God, I wish I had this kind of feedback sooner. 

18:57 – Joran Hofman
I think you mentioned something really important. Right. I think the people who go to Product Hunt are like early adopters. They know, of course, the phase you’re in. As you mentioned, they actually give you positive feedback or at least feedback which you can do something with. And I think that’s really important. It will help you shape the product going forward. 

What would you do differently launching next time?

19:56 – Joran Hofman
You already mentioned it. You’re going to launch again. You have a playbook, you have a checklist, but I can imagine you’re going to do things differently next time. 

20:04 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah. Of course there’s like a lot of things that we think we’ll do differently. I believe we also had issues in terms of just personnel, me and a couple of interns. This time around, if we can plan it better, I have a marketing team now, very small, but I think very efficient and effective and smart group of people putting in place processes where, looking back, we could have done more to convert to traffic, we got into sign ups and perhaps paid clients. I think we could have learned a lot more in terms of our product, our audience, if we had some of the right things in place. Right. When people come into our product, ensuring that they have a way to give feedback better, as opposed to having to go through hoops, having the right systems in place to track them and then send them a note out again, get them converted and pre-launch, I know that I need to organize myself a lot better. 

21:01 – Robin Singhvi
Right. Track a lot more channels, go through a lot more channels to get more people through the door, more people are aware of what we’re doing and have a proper go-to-market plan in place. I think the team is working on that because I think we’re going to launch middle of next month. We should start to see some announcements come through in a few days and hopefully, we can also plug that in the show notes. 

21:26 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, we’ll definitely do. I think this is like a great thing you mentioned, right? You have the preparation for the actual launch, but you also need to, of course, prep on how do you convert the traffic and how do you get the most out of the traffic you’re going to get and the sign ups. I think that’s really important because people probably sign up once and if they don’t are able to leave feedback or communicate with you, then they are going to leave and drop off. 

21:50 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure there are a lot of people who came through and I was like, if I would have even just had the time or the processes or the tools of just ping them again once in the right frame, I could have gotten a lot more out of our previous launch. But hey, you live and learn. 

Advice for SaaS companies growing to 10k MRR

22:08 – Joran Hofman
Exactly. And you still were number one. I think you did a good job there. I like to always ask these questions as in advice on a certain stage. We talk about launching on Product Hunt, what kind of advice would you give somebody or SaaS founders who are just growing to $10k MRR? 

22:24 – Robin Singhvi
Okay, so I think this advice can be generic to whether someone’s launching on Product Hunt or not. Right? I think if you’re talking 10k MRR, like super early-stage founders, the focus needs to be on building a strong foundation for your product and your value proposition. What you’re trying to do is try and have a really clear understanding of your ICP or your target audience. Product Hunt becomes an opportunity for you to test your messaging and positioning. Right. When you engage with the community, you gather that feedback. You want to be able to use it and leave your bias aside and use it to make your product and your messaging and communication even better. Right. I think Product Hunt itself, I think it’s a great way to get unbiased, critical and generally very helpful feedback and advice. It certainly helped us understand our target audience and their problem statement better. 

23:23 – Robin Singhvi
I’ll say it publicly, it actually helped us pivot much sooner than we would have otherwise, especially at an early stage. That’s what you need to really focus on, like a strong foundation for your product and refining your value proposition. 

23:36 – Joran Hofman
I think that’s a lot of founders struggle with right. To get feedback or to get people to try their products. Product Hunt is a great way to get feedback from early users and indeed may have to pivot after all the feedback you received. 

23:50 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, for sure. 

Advice for B2B SaaS founders growing to 1M ARR

23:51 – Joran Hofman
Nice. We’re going to take it one step further. Let’s say people pass the ten K MRR growing to 1 million arr. What kind of advice would you give them? 

23:59 – Robin Singhvi
First thing I’ll say is that good on you for sticking it out. Going from 10k to a million dollar ARR, that’s something to be proud of. Again, I think okay, if we look at Product Hunt as the pivot here, as you approach a million-dollar AR, I think Product Hunt then becomes a fantastic platform for refining your go to market strategy, building your brand awareness or reinforcing it, right. Maybe even building essentially a long tail of leads and prospects in your funnel, of course, even at this stage, right? Yes, you’re at a million dollar AR, but it’s important that you have a solid go to market in place for your launch and a process, like I said, for managing and nurturing the leads that come to the platform. Because at a million dollar arr, what you really want is that fuel to take you to 10 million, 5 million. 

24:51 – Robin Singhvi
There it is. Using Product Hunt well, and using that initiative or that milestone as a stepping stone to further refine your processes, I think can be really powerful. 

25:04 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, because in the end, you will get a lot of people checking you out again. 

25:07 – Robin Singhvi
Indeed. 

Final thoughts

25:07 – Joran Hofman
Like, you can build on your brand, but in the end you still need to refine everything, of course, which always needs to happen as we want to grow fast. We talked about a lot. Any final thoughts I guess you want to share with other B2B SaaS founders. 

25:21 – Robin Singhvi
I think I’ve said it enough, but always remember that launching a product hunt is just one piece of the puzzle. It’s an incredible opportunity, but it’s also not the end all and be all right. It’s essential to have a very comprehensive growth plan in place that goes beyond product hunt. I’d say stay focused on your customers, your product and your mission. Yes, it’s easier said than done, but definitely remember to enjoy the journey and laugh along the way. I know it’s tough, I’ve been there. What if you can try and enjoy that journey of being a SaaS founder? Already done the hard part, so enjoy what will come next. 

26:00 – Joran Hofman
I think that’s really good advice to expand on that . Like yesterday, for example, I went to the SaaS Awards here in the Netherlands and it’s really nice to meet like minded people offline because it’s really easy to stick in your own online bubble and especially nowadays. Right. Finding like-minded people offline is going to help you sometimes to boost your energy a bit and to see that people are struggling. And you’re not alone in this. 

26:24 – Robin Singhvi
Yeah, I think you’re very right on that, Joran. I think the pandemic forced us to go inwards and we did. Not have the luxury of being in person with people. I think I’m realizing it too, the more I meet people in person, or coffee or a drink or a meal, it really helps. 

26:43 – Joran Hofman
Talking about that, if people want to have a coffee with you, or they do want to chat about it with you, where can they reach out to you and get in contact with you? 

26:50 – Robin Singhvi
I love to chat with anyone who just wants to swap SaaS stories or wants to know about my journey with SmartCue. If you’re ever in Portland, definitely we have great coffee, great beer, so hit me up. I’d love to take you out, but if not, find me on LinkedIn. My first name, last name, Robin Singhvi, and of course, our website is getsmartkey.com if you want to learn more about what we’re building at SmartCue. We also have a fledgling YouTube channel with the handle at Getsmartkey. Definitely check us out, support us there. Like I said, we’re going to launch again our product hunt. While we’re grateful to the community that we’ve built up, we’d love to have their redditus community support us as well. 

27:30 – Joran Hofman
Nice. This show is going to go live, I think, at the end of April, so it will be two weeks before launching. We’re going to make sure that we’re going to put all the links towards it in the show notes so you can find them there. Love it. 

27:42 – Robin Singhvi
Love it. Joran, I really appreciate you having me on and I enjoyed our conversation. 

27:47 – Joran Hofman
Likewise. It was great having you, Robin. Thanks. 

Meet the author

Joran Hofman

Back in 2020 I was an affiliate for 80+ SaaS tools and I was generating an average of 30k in organic visits each month with my site. Due to the issues I experienced with the current affiliate management software tools, it never resulted in the passive income I was hoping for. Many clunky affiliate management tools lost me probably more than $20,000+ in affiliate revenue. So I decided to build my own software with a high focus on the affiliates, as in the end, they generate more money for SaaS companies.