Product Hunt definitely is a great place to launch a developer-first product.

If there certainly isn't a formula to launch successfully, there may be a set of principles to help maximize your chances:

• Polish the details: keep the tagline and description simple and straightforward;
• Show the product: no stock images, no marketing fluff;
• Find a Hunter;
• Schedule your launch early;
• Schedule as much content as possible: first comment and social posts;
• Raise awareness: build an audience, support other product launches;
• Go live at 12:01 AM PST on a weekday for maximum exposure;
• Rank in the Top 5 within the first 4 hours;
• Engage: upvote and reply to every comment;
• Keep launching.

Further inspiration

Below are more resources for inspiration:

• Product Hunt Launch Guide, by Product Hunt;
• Lago's Product Hunt Launch Playbook, by Lago (launched in April 2023, ranked #1 Product of the Month);
• How not to launch on Product Hunt, by Plausible (launched in August 2020, ranked #2 Product of the Day).

You can find here more resources to help you get started:

• awesome-product-hunt: a collection of great dev-first product launches;
• product-hunt-launch-kit.md: required inputs to submit a new product;
• product-hunt-community-kit.md: ideas to leverage your network;

Wrapping up

Over to you! I hope this series gave you some insights to prep your launch on Product Hunt. I enjoy contributing to launching dev tools and am happy to help more folks.

If you're launching something new, feel free to reach out on Twitter / X or LinkedIn.

Enjoy your launch day!

Thanks to Laura Du Ry (Appwrite), Tanya Rai (LastMile AI), Luis Guzmán (n8n), and Rishabh Kaul (Appsmith) for your contributions. Thanks to Jack Bridger for bs-checking this post. They're all in the Developer Marketing community, a place where 1,600+ tech founders and marketers from awesome dev-first, open-source companies hang out to share insights and best practices. Join the fun!