S1E15 – How to launch your SaaS on Producthunt with Fabian Maume

How can you effectively launch your SaaS on Producthunt? Did you know that experimenting can result in desired growth for your B2B SaaS? Experimenting can help to establish what’s working for the business and growth inhibitors. In B2b SaaS business terms, we call this experimentation “growth hacking” or “growth marketing.” In today’s episode, we revisit the exciting topic of launching on Product Hunt. Our guest expert is a real “hunter,” Fabian Maume, a contractual CMO for SaaS companies. He shares his experience of successfully launching a product on Product Hunt. Fabian also enlightens us on why launches differ and what tricks are for success.

Why do you need to listen to Fabian – He has undertaken various product launches, achieving a “Product of the Day” ranking along the way. Furthermore, Fabian has made five times the top 5 of the day on Product Hunt. He, therefore, has gained valuable experience in launching the platform for SaaS.

Difference between maker and hunter – The term maker refers to the people who develop a product, also comprising the marketing team in a SaaS company. On the other hand, hunters relate to people who spot new SaaS companies or give exposure to the Product. Furthermore, Fabian explains that a hunter has an existing audience on their social media that they leverage for exposure to the Product. The hunter also doubles as an advisor to the SaaS company on pre-launch.

Benefits of launching on Product Hunt – Launching on the platform provides a SaaS with significant organic reach. The degree of exposure depends on the level of ranking that the company has attained. Secondly, a SaaS earns a badge for the operators of the day when they finish in the top 5 categories. This reliable source of social proof is increasingly relevant in today’s digital marketplace. Thirdly, a business benefits from a free Do Follow backlink on the platform. 

Prepping for the launch – Fabian observes that a SaaS startup without a pre-existing audience will find it challenging to attain the Top 5 of the day. As such, he advises that a startup should target a no-fail launch by focusing on achieving a Do-follow link for user feedback. For those with the Top 5 as the target, our guest expert advises that they prepare for the launch three months in advance. A SaaS should seek an effective hunter for reasonable exposure to achieve this. Also, the business would benefit from building an audience active on Product Hunt. 

Importance of finding a good hunter – Fabian argues that a hunter with good authority gives validation to the business and a great chance of getting featured on the Product Hunt homepage. Also, a hunter with a significant following provides the SaaS with greater visibility among their audience. Interestingly, our guest expert holds that a hunter should not be paid for helping a business post a product and expose it. However, the business should compensate the hunter for prepping the launch. 

Things to do on launch day – Fabian explains that a SaaS can schedule a product launch three weeks in advance. The business should have its creative aspects and visuals ready, featuring comments from the hunter and the maker. During launch day, the launcher should respond to every comment within five minutes. He qualifies the initial two hours as highly critical because the ranking is randomized, and every Product has an equal chance of featuring top on the Product Hunt homepage. The launcher must undertake plenty of marketing, communication with users, and social media engagement. Our guest expert says that the launcher should target to attain 30-50 votes in the first fifteen minutes. 

Does the day of the week matter for a launch – Fabian explains that competition on the Product Hunt platform varies depending on the day of the week. Monday is the most competitive because launchers have the greatest chance of becoming a product of the week. Wednesday and Thursday are moderately competitive because of the high traffic. However, Friday is less competitive and, thus, not a great day to launch. Furthermore, he advises not to launch during the first week due to the high competitiveness for the Product of the month badge. 

Best practices for launching – He prepares a couple of different messages for LinkedIn for the launch time and the time the audience wakes up. For Twitter, you must schedule outreach messages every two hours with updated information. Also, the hunter should have a prepped question for their audience to get more exposure. Fabian advises the need to involve the support team of the SaaS in dealing with incoming comments.

Minimum requirements for launching on Product Hunt – Our guest expert explains that a launcher’s website must be sound for onboarding, with the ability to handle at least 500 visits per day. He further stresses the need for a mapped recording to keep track of the audience activity on the landing page and feedback. Also, Fabian underscores the Importance of running promotions and boosting sales during the launch.

Things to do after launch day – Our guest expert suggests you should extend gratitude to all those who supported the launch. After six months, he recommends doing a re-launch on Product Hunt to boost your exposure.

Growth hacks for launching on Product Hunt – Fabian says building a strong audience before a launch is critical. This way, a SaaS stands a greater chance of managing to become a product of the week. He also advises that you should have prepped templates for outreach messages and questions during the launch.

Common mistakes companies make during product launches on Product Hunt – Our guest expert observes that most launchers do not have a 1:1 ratio logo. He also calls out the fear among companies to launch as soon as possible. Launching in good time helps build an audience by which another launch would be more successful six months later. Also, Fabian points out the failure of not accounting for the time difference between regions during launching.

Importance of professional help during launch – A hunter helps to save a SaaS too much going in the wrong direction. Also, the business benefits from the large audience of the hunter, which translates to greater exposure for the Product.

Role of affiliates in product launch on Product Hunt – Fabian points out the complexity of leveraging affiliates during product launch on Product Hunt. Given that Product Hunt lacks web analytics, it is impossible to assess the benefit of affiliates to the launch. However, the probability of getting the attention of potential partners post-launch demands preparing for an affiliate program.

Advice to a SaaS with 10k MRR – Our guest expert recommends that you target getting the badge for the operator of the day. Also, you should schedule your launch on a less competitive day, such as Wednesday or Thursday, to get more exposure. Interestingly, he advises startups with a low user base to consider launching on a less competitive day like Friday. This provides them with a greater chance of success. 

Advice to a SaaS with 1M ARR – Given the large user base, the business should seek to launch on Product Hunt on the first day of the month. This way, they can become the Product of the month. Also, he advises that the company may launch a macro product every six months as they build exposure. Further, the company should seek to leverage various offerings of paid ads to increase visibility.

Key Time Codes

• (0:30) Introduction of topic and guest expert
• (01:30) Why do you need to listen to Fabian 
• (02:05) Difference between maker and hunter 
• (03:54) Benefits of launching on Product Hunt 
• (05:27) Prepping for the launch 
• (07:40) Importance of finding a good hunter 
• (09:35) Things to do on launch day – 
•  (13:29) Does the day of the week matter for a launch 
• (14:23) Best practices for launching 
• (16:40) Minimum requirements for launching on Product Hunt 
• (19:13) Things to do after launch day
• (21:23) Growth hacks for launching on Product Hunt 
• (22:23) Common mistakes companies make during product launch on Product Hunt 
• (24:12) Importance of professional help during the launching 
• (25:32) Role of affiliates in product launch on Product Hunt 
• (27:27) Advice to a SaaS with 10k MRR 
• (30:06) Advice to a SaaS with 1M ARR 
• (33:20) Fabian’s contact information.

Transcription

Introduction to Fabian Maume

00:30  – Joran Hofman
Welcome back to another episode on the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. If you want to grow your B2B SaaS, you will need to run experiments to see what is working and what is driving business. This is also known as growth hacking or growth marketing. We’re going to talk to Fabian Maume. He’s a fractional CMO for SaaS companies. This basically means helps startups who can’t or don’t want to hire a full time CMO. He helps his clients with any kind of growth marketing. Today, we’re going to talk specifically about product hunt. Again, as it is a great way for your SaaS to receive free exposure, new signups, and in the end, paid clients. Fabian himself has hunted more than 20 products on product hunt. Next to helping his clients to launch a product hunt, he’s a real hunter, as you can call him on the platform. 

01:19  – Joran Hofman
We are going to talk with him how to launch your sauce on product hunt. Why not? All launches are equal and some hacks to make your launch successful. Welcome to the show, Fabian. 

01:29  – Fabian Maume
Thanks for having me. 

01:30  – Joran Hofman
I always like to ask this question at the beginning in your own words, why should people listen to you? 

01:36  – Fabian Maume
Today, basically, I made a lot of product launch. Like, I made 30 product launch as hunter. So far. I was product of the day like once. I think I was top five of the day like five times. I also made few launches as a maker. Like, I made so five launches as a maker. I know also the other side, like being a SaaS launching on product hunt and actually trying to leverage product and to grow your business and get more cash in the business. 

What is a Hunter on Product Hunt and their responsibilities? 

02:05  – Joran Hofman
Yeah. Good, because those are the two terms product hunt uses, right? Maker and hunter, where the maker is the SaaS company. The hunter is basically who spots new SaaS companies. 

02:16  – Fabian Maume
Yeah. Basically, maker are people which are working on the product. It’s typically everybody in the marketing team, usually of the SaaS company. It’s not limited in number to my knowledge. It’s good to be listing like order marketing or support team because all the maker will have access to a dashboard on the day of the launch and they can use it to monitor comments and easily answer them. You can have only one hunter, which is like a percent to help you get extra exposure that on the day of the launch or the follower of the hunter get a notification. If you have a hunter with thousand followers, it’s going to give you a boost in exposure. 

02:53  – Joran Hofman
Do you have any other responsibilities as a hunter? Like what is the exact role being a hunter? Are there any other things you need to do? 

03:02  – Fabian Maume
So it depends who you have. On the pure product hand user rules, enter is just here to be posting product and buzzes and notification. Now when you’re launching, it’s good to be negotiating with your Enter and make sure that it will do some extra work for you. Typically all hunter have some existing audience in some other social media. For example for me it’s like LinkedIn. They will help you promote on their personal social media, on some community they are part on and so on. Also the hunter should advise you about what to do to prepare the launch. Especially like how to write your description, how to get proper visuals for your launch ready and this kind of thing. 

03:41  – Joran Hofman
I think that’s important because in my intro set you hunted 20 products and you had some successful ones and maybe some less successful ones. Exactly of course what is working and what might not be working. Yeah, just I guess maybe to go to the basics because as a maker, as a SaaS company, you’re going to launch your product on product hunt. Why again should people care about launching on product hunt? 

04:05  – Fabian Maume
So it brings few benefits. Like I would say there are three benefits of product end. The first one is it gives you some organic reach. It’s going to depend how far you are in the ranking. Typically if you are in top three, you can expect about 500 to 1000 visits on your website. If you are like below this but still in top ten, usually you should still be getting about 200 visits. If you are below you just start to get less like my fees, the higher you hire, the more organic rate you will have. The first benefit just it gave you exposure. Second benefit you have if you finish in the top five is you will get a nice badge which shows that you are product of the day and it’s quite good, like social proof that a lot of people know, especially if you are targeting audience like developers, like usually they know about proctant. 

04:56  – Fabian Maume
If you have a badge like this, it’s really nice to have. The last benefit you have is you get a do follow link from Proctant which has quite good authorities. It is good for your SEO, especially when you’re early stage that it’s a free do follow back link. 

When to start preparing your product hunt launch?

05:10  – Joran Hofman
Yeah. Even though if you might not end up in the top ten, at least you get that. Good. Do follow link. Might be an expensive one, but definitely worth it, because you are going to spend a lot of time, of course, on the launch. If you aren’t, then listen to this full podcast, because you probably should. Let’s talk about the launch. First things first, when do you need to start prepping the launch? 

05:33 – Fabian Maume
This will actually depend what is your target with the launch. You have to be a bit realistic with product hands that it’s going to be hard for you to be in the top five if you have no preexisting audience. Typically on the day of the launch you’ll be sending email blast to your user asking them for support and that’s one of the things which will have the main impact on your launch. If you are like Ray new startups that you have just like less than 100 people in your newsletter, you cannot reach for top five. What I recommend to really stage startup is to go for a more no frill launch to prepare, have a less time preparing it and basically focus mainly on having this nice defrolink and basically having like let’s say 100 visits to have some beta user to get feedback. If you’re going for this, it’s feasible to prepare launch in just like few weeks, like within months. 

06:26 – Fabian Maume
If your goal is to be in top five of the day, you want to be start preparing like three months in advance basically. 

06:33 – Joran Hofman
That’s interesting. Three months in advance and what are you going to do in those three months? What do you advise people actually to do in those 90 days? 

06:41 – Fabian Maume
Like in preparation there is two things which kind of big impact. One thing is to find a good hunter which Buzz here is going to give you good exposure and that will take you time because typically hunter like good one have book scheduled in advance about when to round. You need to plan like usually at least two months to have a good hunter. There is a nice website to find relevant hunter which is called Upvote Bell which basically help you find hunter for a specific topic like gross hacking or whatever and you can basically contact those people. That’s one task which takes a lot of time. Other tasks which can help you is to build an audience by connect with other people which are active on Product Hunt. Like I’m doing this type of determining script to identify people who have bought a similar product and then I’m sure they’re running like cleaning outreach. 

07:29 – Fabian Maume
This also takes time because we are limited in scale of leaning outreach. You can send only 100 requests per week. If you want to be contacting like 500 people, you need some time to be running the campaign. 

How important is a Hunter? 

07:40 – Joran Hofman
How important is it? Because you mentioned it at the first already. It takes time to find a good hunter. How important is to find a good hunter? We did another episode on Product Hunt where the guy said it’s not that important to find a good hunter. I feel in your opinion it actually is. Yeah. 

07:55 – Fabian Maume
It is less important than it was on the day of the launch. Follower of the hunter gets a notification. One year ago this notification was per email, now it’s like in hub notification so it’s less visible. However, it still has a considerable impact. Basically if the hunter are more than thousands follower, it still has some impact and also it’s going to help you get featured. You are posting on product tents, it’s not 100% sure that your product will be featured on the home page because the product and team is making manual curation of which products they believe they serve to be on the home page. If you are hunted by somebody with good authority, you have almost like automated validation by product and team. That’s all the big benefits that it’s secure you to be featured on the home page. 

08:49 – Joran Hofman
Maybe really blunt question, but what’s in it for a hunter? Do you pay them? What is in it for them to hunt you basically. 

08:58 – Fabian Maume
According to user rules, hunters should not be paid for hunting. Usually the main benefit is that it helps them build their personal brand and now a lot of hunter are running other type of consulting aside and for charging you. The fact of hunting which is just like you to pause the product and get the exposure of follower should be free but they can be charging you for preparing the launch like to help you have proper design and this kind of thing. 

09:27 – Joran Hofman
We have those 90 days. We found a good hunter. We found people already voted on similar products. Now, Launch day is coming close. What do we need to do? Just a couple of days before launch and on the actual Launch day itself? 

09:41 – Fabian Maume
You can be scheduling the launch like now? I think it’s possible to schedule it up to three week in advance and so you need to get all the creative ready. You need to have product descriptions, header, which is 70 characters kind of thing. It’s important to have some visual of the Hub. Like you need usually to have at least three screenshots of the Hub. If you can have a video demo of the Hub, it’s something which will have a big impact and you need also like logo of the hub and prepar the first comment you will have. The Hunter will make a comment and the maker should also make a comment which explain what this project is doing, why it’s interesting to check out. 

Steps to take on Launch day

10:21 – Joran Hofman
Yeah. Can you then walk me through launch day? Because you now can schedule it normally. I think people were just waiting on the perfect time to hit publish. What do you need to do as a company on launch day itself if you already prepared everything? 

10:36 – Fabian Maume
A lot of things. First the launch start at midnight, Pacific time it’s about like 09:00 A.m. Like Amsterdam time. During the launch it is critical that you’re answering comments relatively quickly. That’s more important thing like you want to be answering each comment within five minutes because if you don’t you would be penalized in thermophorganic reach on the platform. That’s something you have to do during all the day then during the first two hour are critical because for the first two hour the ranking on the on page is randomized. Every product has a chance to be on top of their own page once the randomization is done. At 11:00 A.m., like European time, the ranking is based mainly on number of above. At eleven you should have between 51 hundred votes to make sure that you are in the top of the ranking. For those two hour you need to do a lot of marketing to be boosting your launch so that’s when you will contact back like all the people that you contacted before that are active on brokehand. 

11:48 – Fabian Maume
Just when you are contacting those people mark in which time zone they are that in those two first hour you will contact any people which are in Europe or like India. You don’t want to contact people in US because it will be middle of the night for them and they are not going to respond within this two first hour. In this two hour you want to be sending email blasts to your user to say hey, we are on product hunts today, please support us. You want to be having like the hunter and everybody in the team sharing the launch on LinkedIn, Twitter, like whatever social media you have a good for our base on and you want to be sharing also in a few Facebook community with people active on Proctant. You want to be doing this already in the morning to get as many of us as possible in those 1st 2 hours. 

12:33 – Joran Hofman
Yeah. As you mentioned, it is 09:00 A.m. Amsterdam time. Do we have an advantage over US companies because we’re doing it daytime and they are doing it in the middle of the night? 

12:45 – Fabian Maume
Yeah, I do think that product tends to act better for Europe because well you have people awake here. It’s possible to launch interior anytime during the day that you can be launching a product, let’s say like 01:00 P.m. Or time. The US wake up waver it is much harder because if you are launching at a later date in the first 15 minutes you need to get like 30 50 bots otherwise you will just stay at the bottom of the ranking and you won’t be able to catch up. 

When to launch on product

13:17 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, because everybody already got their upflows. Does it matter in which day of the week you launch? 

13:25 – Fabian Maume
Yes. You have different competition depending of the day, competitive day. Monday is the most competitive because that’s when you have the IH chance to be product of the week and then Wednesday and Thursday are very competitive. That’s when you can have a lot of web traffic. Friday is less competitive day and it’s usually what I recommend when you are relatively early stage that you don’t have existing audience is the easy day to be launching. Also the time in the men’s matter, you should avoid the first week because the first week is more competitive. It’s when you have the Irish chance to be Product of the month or if you have big audience, you want to launch on the first week to be product of the month. 

14:06 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, nice. You probably have peak hours on product hunt or big days on product hunt where a lot of sales companies are launching. Are there any kind of resource I kind of talked about it already, but you mentioned like you need to have the listing, the video, the visuals, the email you can already prepare the first comment you can prepare. Are there any other things you need to get ready before launching? 

14:29 – Fabian Maume
I’m typically preparing the different also message to be sharing on LinkedIn and so on. Also like your Twitter. On the day of the launch I’m typically making two LinkedIn message. One is right at the time of the launch and one is around like two, three p. M. Our time because when us is waking up so it allow you to be catching up on those people. For Twitter, I’m basically posting every 2 hours. I have a set of for every launch, some template of message ready and just updated based on what statistics we get during the day. I also always prepare before the launch the outreach message we sent to people that we are connecting with, which I can proact, like prepare message to ask them for support and also prepare a question to be asking on product hand community. That’s one way you can get extra exposure. 

15:22 – Fabian Maume
Proctant has a discussion area where you can be asking questions and when you ask a question there, all your followers get a notification that you’re asking a question. Every time I’m doing a launch, I’m asking a question related to the launch and mention that, by the way, I’m hunting this product today and the. 

15:41 – Joran Hofman
Question is going to be from the hunter to his audience basically, right? Yeah. Okay, nice. Yeah, I think you mentioned it. Right. You need to respond within five minutes to every question and comment. Definitely get everything ready like these things before so you can actually focus on answering these things and you don’t have to come up with the message, et cetera. I think that’s the best practice here. 

16:04 – Fabian Maume
Yeah, definitely. FAQ is definitely helping. It’s important to cooperate with the help desk of your SaaS before the launch. So make sure they have FAQ ready. Usually it’s good to have some people from support in the maker list of makers so they can actually take care of comments because they’re usually the most qualified to be commenting on word questions. 

Things to be aware off for Launch Day

16:27 – Joran Hofman
That’s actually a good one. There anything else you need to prepare organizational wise to make sure you’re going to be ready for the traffic for the sign ups? Are things going to break when you’re going to launch on product hunt? 

16:38 – Fabian Maume
Yeah so you need to have memo requirement to be launching on product end is onboarding is working on your page so test it properly and it needs to be scalable enough to be handling like up to 500 visits within the day because otherwise it can be rated maging if people come from product tent and they see like a broken website. Also recommend to have on the website some like it map recording something like Odd jar or Smart look. Basically you will have a lot of traffic on your website and it’s a perfect time to be texting your UI and your onboarding. Make sure that you have a Hitmap set up on mainlanding page to see how people interact with it and be able to iterate later on with product based on those feedback basically. 

17:26 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, I think that’s actually an interesting point. It’s a good moment to run protecking experiments because you are going to get a lot of traffic so it’s time also to test things out as well. 

17:36 – Fabian Maume
Yeah, it’s also an occasion to be running promotions so you have an option where you’re launching a product hand to include a discount code you can define it however you want. It can be like a fix amount, a percentage, it can be lifetime deal basically it can be a good way to be boosting yourselves. There is too many approach usually so for early stage startup it’s common to do lifetime deals so you get some input of cash flow and give you some runaway for surviving. Basically that’s what I actually did with my own fast startup first product launch we did we run like some deal and it gave us like 2500 USD basically of cash that we could use for the next month. Otherwise, if you’re more established, it’s common to have a discount on first month of subscription. You are trying to boost the MRR and you can limit this discount in time. 

18:29 – Fabian Maume
I created some fear of missing out. You need to use this discount within one week of the launch so you can get the most of this time. 

18:39 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, and I think that’s common best practice to not have discount codes living on the internet which are also available always so just make sure you limited it indeed I think that’s a small advice but very important advice. 

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What do after launch day?

19:34  – Joran Hofman
We launched, we did all these things. What do you need to do when the day is over? Monday is over, we’re going into the rest of the week. What do we need to do after launch day? 

19:45 – Fabian Maume
Typically you will be thanking people for supporting you. It’s common like if you have good result to be writing a blog post about how you did it. It’s type of content that people really like in styles to know how you made it. What you can do is after six months you have the option to relaunch on product end if you have a new feature. That’s the thing you need to be booking a calendar like in six months time you have the option to relaunch if you have a new update. Actually product tent is kind of evolving toward encouraging relaunch that you have no feature which is called the product hub which is a page where you can see like all the launch of company. Anytime somebody uploads your launch, he become a follower of this page. If you are doing a relaunch, he is getting a notification that you are relaunching this product. 

20:35 – Fabian Maume
You have the ability to be basically building some audience over time and basically just get better on each launch. 

20:42 – Joran Hofman
Yeah. This is maybe why sometimes people it’s also good to start launching on product hunt and not always to wait until the perfect product because you can actually build up an audience here. 

20:53 – Fabian Maume
Yeah, I would say the biggest mistake I made on my side with my own sauce is I was waiting too long to be launching a product hunt. You will made only two launch within two years because were always waiting like yeah, we have a new feature coming, it’s going to be a killer feature, I want to wait for it. Every launch is just a nice opportunity to get exposure and get new users. You should plan to be launching every six months if you are pushing new feature on a regular basis. 

21:21 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, and I think this is a good reminder for ourselves to start preparing our own launch because we haven’t launched ourselves either and we’re now launching ready to 2.0. I was waiting for that moment but I probably should have launched sooner already. Good learning for the people who are listening right now. Growth hacks. You kind of mentioned a couple already, but any other kind of growth hacks you’ve used to launch product hunt. 

21:46 – Fabian Maume
Like I was saying, term of growth, the main one is ready to be building an audience beforehand. For this, have some web scrapping to be getting lists of people about Smira products and then I have nice templates which work for adding outreach which usually give 60% acceptance on contact requests. It’s like nice result asking a question on the day of the launch. Do not basically leverage building notification is another grow hack which is working quite well outside of this. I don’t think there is many grow hack. You can be doing it’s like just do the work. 

22:23 – Joran Hofman
Yeah. The discount code you mentioned and I think you do mention like hot jar testing things so they’re not growth hacks to really get more upvotes but at least making sure in the end you’re growing your product and optimizing things needed. Let’s talk about mistakes. What are the common mistakes you see companies making while launching on product hunt? 

22:45 – Fabian Maume
The most common one is quite easy to avoid is you need the logo in one to one ratio. That’s the most common issue I have as a hunter that I receive logo which have bad ratio and then it looked like horrible. Just keep in mind that you need the logo in one one ratio, otherwise it will look terrible. Launch as soon as possible, especially if you are a stage. Don’t be afraid to have a launch which will finish in top 30 and just give you like 50 Android visits. It help you to build an audience, it help you to be stacking. You can relaunch after six months. Don’t be afraid to launch as soon as possible. I had once a mistake. It’s happened like only for one week in the year is the time change to wintertime and summertime as one week delay between US and Europe. 

23:36 – Fabian Maume
Be aware of this like check three time like the conversion between Pacific time and European time. Because it happened to me to realize like 1 hour after the launch that were actually already live because of this. 

23:48 – Joran Hofman
In that case you launched on Sunday evening and basically you ended up the week and ended today. So it didn’t work out. 

23:57 – Fabian Maume
Probably yeah, especially it was before randomizing of the first 2 hours. The first hour was the most critical before that. If you discover like 1 hour too late that you’re already live, we. 

Why should you get help when launching on Product Hunt?

24:09 – Joran Hofman
Talked about at the beginning. You’re a hunter, you mentioned. Why do hunters hunt? They also offer different services or offer different kinds of help towards these companies. I know you do as well. You help companies to launch on product hunt. Why is it important to get help around launch strategy? 

24:28 – Fabian Maume
Basically it saves you a lot of time in doing research. That if you Google how to make a product hunt launch, I think you have nowadays like Android article on the topic. Most of them are good, but it’s going to take you a lot of time if you want to get all the tips, especially that there were few recent change from randomization of the first two hour. I think it’s just two months old so you might not find it in the recent article. It’s good to have somebody which can walk you through the process and tell you how to avoid mistakes. Second thing is definitely a hunter with a follower base is definitely going to give you a boost in exposure. I will definitely recommend the website which is upload bell to be finding Good Hunter that you can enter there like any topic and give you a list of hunter in this topic and don’t be shy or try to outreach those people. 

25:19 – Fabian Maume
In a worst case you would just be having a chat with them. They will give you some advice about how to launch. 

25:24 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, because in the end most of them shouldn’t charge you money for it, right? They are going to offer you something else but going to save you time avoiding making common mistakes and definitely help you to get a first community around your launch how do you see affiliates fit within launching on product hunt? 

25:43 – Fabian Maume
It’s complicated to use affiliate for product hunt launch. It is good to ask your advocates to support your launch. Franco made a launch for Marketing Minor, which is Theosuits that’s similar to Ashref, and they have, like ambassador program in different countries. They leverage ambassador to be broadcasting the launch in different community like in Germany and so on. That definitely gives them a boost in exposure. Now, the problem you have with affiliate and product launch is proctant doesn’t give you any web analytics. You don’t know how many people visit your product and page. You don’t know where they are coming from. It will be really hard to assess the result of your affiliate effort and it will be really hard to be paying them back for the efforts, which is usually like big motivation of affiliates. That’s the main challenge you will have with affiliate and product and yeah. 

26:38 – Joran Hofman
I can definitely see that because in the end they want to earn money and you need attracting for it. I think you already mentioned, as in you are going to get a lot of traffic. You are going to get a lot of new users. Those users, if they like your product, you can actually convert them into affiliates. It is going to be a bit of a longer game with product hunt. 

26:56 – Fabian Maume
Yeah, so definitely. Product hunt can be a good opportunity to hire affiliates so it’s also typical that if you finish in top five, you have usually a lot of people contacting you lot of news tech writer will be like following product hunt. There are typically people who are living from affiliates by recommending different tools. It’s typical after launch that if you are successful, to be contacted by several affiliates, which are like, Hey. Do you have an affiliate program? Can I join and promote you? 

27:23 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, so we might have to add that to the list of things preparing before the launch. Make sure you go to relatives and set up an affiliate program if you’re a sauce. 

27:32 – Fabian Maume
That’s a good idea. Yeah. 

Advice for founders growing to 10k MRR

27:34 – Joran Hofman
Nice. We’re going to wrap up with these two questions I always like to ask vice versa stage you kind of already mentioned it like you need to launch almost every six months but let’s just start with somebody who’s starting off his SaaS and growing to 10k MRR what kind of advice would you give to them? 

27:52 – Fabian Maume
I would say the metrics which matter for product launch is not razor MRR, it’s like how many user you have because that’s what would determine if your email blast is efficient or not. I will set up the metrics to determine which type of launch you want to go for. Specifically, if you have a big user base, you will set a goal that you want to get those badge for. Basically social proof that your goal is not only to have exposure to have one of those badge you want to finish in top five. If you have more than 500,000 users, you want to get those badge. You also will want to pick a more competitive day like Wednesday or Thursday to have more exposure, like more web traffic. If you have more early stage, you want to be launching on Friday because otherwise competitive day, you have higher chance to just get exposure without existing audience. 

28:42 – Fabian Maume
Last thing if you are more early stage if you need cash flow, consider a lifetime deal in parallel of product and launch. It can give you a nice run hour in term of cash flow. 

28:53 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, it is actually interesting that you say it, because you now mentioned Friday as less competitive because the most common advice you get is launch on Monday and then twelve or nine Amsterdam time, twelve or twelve one Pacific time. You could actually also turn it around, launch on Friday, so you’re more likely to actually end up number one of the day. 

29:14 – Fabian Maume
Yeah, once I didn’t mention if you finish in top ten you are featuring the newsletter in the following day. It is good to be targeting top day like being in top ten on Friday is better than being 11th on Monday. 

29:30 – Joran Hofman
Yeah, and that makes sense. If your user base isn’t that high and you probably don’t want to launch on Monday, you want to launch on these more easy days to get into the top ten. 

29:40 – Fabian Maume
One parents point regarding stage of startup product is relevant once you can serve global customer because most traffic you get is from us and so on. If you started your site as something like super localized because like I say you are leveraging some legal framework for this kind of thing wait to have something which is appealing for global audience before launching on product ten. 

Advice for founders growing to 1M ARR

30:04 – Joran Hofman
Yeah and that goes really well into the next question because we now kind of discussed growing to ten KMR with a small audience. What kind of advice would you give somebody who’s growing to 1 million AR so probably already have a bigger user base like what kind of advice would you give them? 

30:20 – Fabian Maume
Basically with bigger base they want to have product of the day even maybe product of the man’s because it’s a really nice recognition. For them launch on the first day of the man’s target to be product of the man’s make some marketing buzz about it that you have this recognition. Also because you should have a considerable marketing team, you can consider to launch macro product. You can launch every six months one specific product but you can easily launch other products. Product tents define a product as one specific URL on the website. If you’re making a sublending page with a really good quality white paper for example, you can be launching it as a micro product but you get some exposure about it. 

31:08 – Joran Hofman
Yeah and that comes down to the other thing you said you can build your own audience maybe then or as a hunter you build an audience. Do you also build an audience on product hunt maker? 

31:18 – Fabian Maume
Yeah so every profile is about to get follower and so I didn’t mention it but hey, you also send notification to follower of the maker. Also there is now a feature which is called product hub which aggregate all the launch from a specific company and this hub can also get followers. It’s one more way you can be building audience is you get followers there. 

Final thoughts

31:42 – Joran Hofman
Nice. I think this is really good. We are coming to the end. Any final thoughts you want to share with other B2B SaaS founders? 

31:50 – Fabian Maume
I will maybe make one more point like if you are already big in term of SaaS you can consider also the paid advertisement on product tent bikely. It can be rentered if your audience is matching product tent well so if you are targeting like other makers or like India car, it can be relevant. It’s starting at 1000 USD per month so you need to have a considerable marketing budget to start considering it. But it can be interesting for some. 

32:20 – Joran Hofman
Company and I haven’t heard of it to be honest. This is the first time. So what does it do? Are you going to basically promote your launch or is it just like running ads on product on platform? 

32:32 – Fabian Maume
There is two type of ads available. There is a marketplace on product hands where you can basically offer special discount to product hand community and so you are paying to be listed on this platform and every time something new is added, it’s featured in the newsletter. If you pay attention to product. I think the third result usually you will see is that it’s not something launching today, it’s called Promoted. That back end of the type of advertisement you can be running on the platform is that she would be visible on the landing page, like on the main page as a promoted product. 

33:06 – Joran Hofman
Yeah. It’s going to give you permanent visibility as long, of course, you keep paying product hand. 

33:11 – Fabian Maume
Yeah. 

33:12 – Joran Hofman
Nice. If people want to get in contact with you, what would be the best way to do so? 

33:16 – Fabian Maume
Well, like, simply go on Tetris IO and there is a shadow call on top and you can directly have access to my current. 

33:25 – Joran Hofman
Nice. Well, we’re definitely going to link your site so people can find you really quickly. Thanks again, Fabian, for coming onto the show and it was a pleasure to having you. 

33:35 – Fabian Maume
Samewise. 

33:37 – Joran Hofman
Cheers. 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.