Product Hunt’s PRD Template

Intro & Goal

Our goal is to make Product Hunt the destination to share and discover new, innovative products and services, from mobile apps to hardware products. Others in this space focus on editorial curation, following more of a blog-like model. Product Hunt is a community, a place to geek out about products with other enthusiastic people.

Who’s it for?

Product people - those building products that enjoy discovering, playing with, and learning from new, innovative products. Also serves as a pulse on potential competing products
Seed-Stage Investors - always sourcing new deals and seeking signals to curate what startups to evaluate and meet.
Everyday Tech Consumers - people that love to find new stuff

Why build it?

It’s something we personally enjoy using
Early, initial traction from “linkydink MVP” - 175+ subscribers, 30 contributors (some VC’s and founders)
Community verticals on the rise. GrowthHackers.com, Designer News, and Quibb have gained traction in specific startup/tech verticals.
Monetization opportunities in advertising and/or data
Tech-risk very low

What is it?

Glossary

Post - new product hunt submissions
Comments comments on a post
Replies replies to comments
Vote votes for a post
Index View - homepage of Product Hunt (all users can view this)
Detailed View permalink page for each post
Profile View - user profile page

User Types

Non-Registered Users - people that have no yet registered
Registered Viewers people that have registered and can vote on posts but cannot post or comment.
Contributors - registered users that can post, comment, and upvote (ie, “Hunters”?)
Admins

Index View

The Index View (ie, homepage) displays the list of posts chronologically, segmented by day (a la linkydink).

When not signed in, a CTA must be presented to signup. When signed up, a CTA to post must be present.

The “Hunters” (ie, contributors) must also be listed, highlighting the community of product people curating the content.

Detailed View

The Detailed View (ie, permalink page) displays information about the post (same as noted below) but with comments expanded.

Additionally, this page should include “who’s here,” showing profile pics of the people engaging in the conversation and/or voted

Posts

Each post must contain:

Name - name of the product or service
Tagline - short (<60 character?) description of the product or service
URL duh
Submitted By person that submitted the post with their profile picture and/or name
Votes number of votes for that post w/ profile pics of each user that voted
Comments number of comments for that post (maybe with profile pics of those that commented)

After submitting a post, the user should be instructed to say something interesting, adding the first comment to spark conversation.

Comments

Every post has a comment feed, algorithmically ranked like HN to surface the top comments. Each comment includes:

Comment Text CTA should frame the conversation (e.g. “say something interesting about Coin”)
Submitted By - user that commented
Votes - users can vote up comments
Replies - replies are chronologic, one-layer deep (ie, no threaded replies)

Following

Users can follow other users. This does not change the Index View (the feed of posts) but will be used to re-engage users when people they follow take actions like post, upvote, or comment.

Email Notifications

Users receive the following email notifications:

Daily Product Hunt digest - list of all posts for the day (later could be top 10 products and could be changed to weekly digest if the user prefers)
Social Re-engagement

Follows
Votes on Their Posts
Comments on Their Posts
Comments on Posts They Voted On
Replies to Comments They Made

Registration

Every user must register with Twitter, pulling in the following information:

Name
Profile Pic
Twitter URL
Twitter Username (for tagging/mentions in the future maybe)

Additionally, they must also provide:

Email Address
Title and Company Name

Brainstormed Ideas

Guide and Structure Comments - preface comments with structure (e.g. “this product is similar to…”, “this product is awesome because…”) a la Facebook’s “I’m watching…”, “I’m eating…”
Related Links press, blog posts, etc
Algorithmic (HN-like) Ranking
Editors Picks - “starring” editorial picks
Product Hunt Groups people can create groups, similar to subreddits

Competitors & Product Inspiration

Beta List - paid promotion (and maybe some editorial) of early, often in beta, startups
StartupList - editorial curation of new startups
TastemakerX - music discovery community

Seeding Users & Content

Initial contributors will be hand-picked to create exclusivity and reduce potential spam. Ideal contributors will be recognizable product people (e.g. Nir Eyal, Semil Shah, Hiten Shah) and investors (e.g. Josh Elman, Nick Chirls) in the startup space but may also include lesser known, early tech adopters.

To capture higher profile startup personalities like Hunter Walk we may submit product finds on his behalf with permission (e.g. based on something he’s tweeted).

Mockups

Index View

Detail View

Tech Notes

Models

User

twitter_uid
name
username
image
headline
daily_email?

Post

user_id
name
tagline
clicks
url

PostVote

user_id
post_id

Comment

user_id
body

CommentVote

user_id
comment_id

comment_id
user_id
body

Go to Market

Engage/Recruit Influencers - make them feel part of the product’s success and design

Ask for direct product feedback
Feedback on blog post/press release

Invite Contributors Before Public Launch - ensure content is populated
Blog Post - “30 Minute MVP”

Post on PandoDaily or Andrew Chen’s blog?
Submit to Hacker News, GrowthHackers.com, Designer News, Quibb

Press Release

Reach out to press contacts (PandoDaily, FastCo)
Mass distro other press (see http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/09/24/google-news-api-mturk-press/)

Startup Edition and Ryan’s Personal Email List ~4k subscribers
Email Existing Linkydink Users

Post-Launch Marketing

Product Deconstructions Blog Posts

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OLD STUFF BELOW

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Architecture

Homepage Landing page (not signed in)
Homepage Feed (signed in) - list of posts
Product Post Permalink - deeplink to a specific post
User Profile
User Settings - update email address, notification preferences
About/FAQ

Homepage - Not Logged In

Homepage (producthunt.co) when the user is not logged in, doesn’t let the user browse the full feed of products, pushing users to register (see andrewchen.co’s blog - he’s had success putting up this walled garden). Users can still view permalink pages though.

Homepage Feed (Viewing Posts) - Logged In

Initially, everything is displayed chronologically rather than algorithmically or based on votes. Since the user base will be relatively small at first, we won’t have enough people voting to meaningfully rank products (yet).

Permalink Page

Each post has it’s own URL to share. Will be useful for encouraging hunters to post links to their findings (e.g. “I just posted Coin to Product Hunt - http://producthunt.co/posts/coin).

Interactions & User Feedback Loops

The success of Product Hunt relies on effective feedback loops and re-engagement with the service, something heavily lacking in the linkydink MVP. Users can interact in the following ways:

Submit Posts
Comment on Posts
Upvote Posts

Post-v1

View a Post - a la Quibb, show who viewed a post and if not registered, anonymize. Could also just be the count.
Upvote Comments
Follow Users
Mention Users - ability to tag a user in a post description or comment (e.g. “@ryan posted a similar product, XYZ”)
Forward to Users - notify specific users (a la Potluck) of a product/post they might be interested in, could be seamlessly part of the posting flow

Submitting a Post

Each post includes:

URL
Title/Name - 100 char max
Description - 250 char max
Submitted By
Upvote Count & Who Voted
Comments

No deduping of URL’s (e.g. if a user already submits a link to mindie.co, it shouldn’t prevent another person from submitting again) is necessary for v1 but something to consider in the future

Commenting on a Post

Any registered user can comment on a post in a chronological discussion (threaded or not?)

Upvoting/Liking a Post

Any registered user can upvote/like a post, incrementing its vote count by one.

Email Notifications

Users receive the following email notifications:

Daily Product Hunt digest - list of all posts for the day (later could be top 10 products and could be changed to weekly digest if the user prefers)
Social Re-engagement - new follows, comments, post upvotes

Registering

Users must register with their Twitter profile and supply an email address. Their Twitter profile picture, @username, and bio is stored and used. Users should automatically follow people on Product Hunt that they already follow on Twitter to increase notifications and investment in the service.

Future Ideas

Notification Feed notifications of new social activity (comments, upvotes, etc.)
Browser Extension/Bookmarklet
Tweet to Post ability to tweet at @producthunt to submit new posts
Email to Post ability to email submit@producthunt.co to submit new posts
Mobile - the site should be responsive and adapt to a mobile interface but mobile usability isn’t necessary for v1.

Competitors & Product Inspiration

Beta List - paid promotion (and maybe some editorial) of early, often in beta, startups
StartupList - editorial curation of new startups
TastemakerX - music discovery community

Seeding Users & Content

To capture higher profile startup personalities like Hunter Walk we may submit product finds on his behalf with permission (e.g. based on something he’s tweeted).