rrhoover

Sending love, whisky friend :)

This was written for investors but curious to hear the POV from more founders

Appreciate that. :)

We also entered the market at the right time. 2013 was very optimistic as mobile hit mainstream and barriers to build lowered. We’re entering a similar phase with AI today.

It's been a while since I've published an essay. Hopefully this is useful for a few folks.

I do implicitly as I've gotten to know talented, motivated people

I've been doing a lot of self-reflection going into the new year and thought I would share some learnings building Product Hunt over the past 5 years, along with our YC application video (perhaps against my better judgement). :)

Funny you ask. Jacq on our team is planning our next retreat. Earlier this year we brought everyone to SF. The year prior shortly after the acquisition, the entire team (including AngelList) went to Mexico which was a great opportunity to get to know the broader team.

This time we may do an offsite elsewhere, which might be more fun and affordable.

It's been a loooong time since we hosted a hackathon. The last one took place at YC HQ in Mountain View three years ago.

So far we have 1,000+ makers signed up and awesome group of judges, including YC's very own Michael Seibel, participating.

Love the idea of connecting makers with specific beta testers that match their target audience. We're exploring this as well.

Re: "spackling of existing services", you're right. We saw so many people piecing various services together (Mailchimp, Typeform, homemade landing pages, etc.) and see an opportunity to simplify and connect all these things together so that makers can focus more of their time building their product.