It's common knowledge that Product Hunt is rigged, and they will not heavily punish startups for soliciting upvotes (blatant example: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission (https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 ) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated with a submitted startup (and often people upvote just because of the submitter; the followers system promotes this)
A year ago, I wrote a rant asking about this, among other claims that that Product Hunt is elitist (https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-transparency-... ) To my knowledge, there were no significant improvements in response since then in PH rules.
I bring this up now because the AngelList vertical integration now makes perfect sense: since AL is now promoting investment syndicates, there is now even more benefit from investor collusion and lack of disclosure!
A year ago, I wrote a rant asking about this, among other claims that that Product Hunt is elitist (https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-transparency-... ) To my knowledge, there were no significant improvements in response since then in PH rules.
I bring this up now because the AngelList vertical integration now makes perfect sense: since AL is now promoting investment syndicates, there is now even more benefit from investor collusion and lack of disclosure!