Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt. On The 20 Minute VC, he shares key principles for sustaining user engagement and preventing online communities from dying out.
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“When you build a community, you have to not only seed it with the right kind of culture that you want, but then you have to make sure it grows, and you have to keep growing, otherwise it just dies. A lot of communities start, but they don't grow, and then they just kind of fizzle out.”
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More from Ryan Hoover
Opinion
Hoover doubts a single person can run Twitter and Square simultaneously
“I don't know how he can do it. I don't know. I just don't know how anyone can run two companies, especially two massive prominent companies as a single person.”
Ryan HooverDec 11, 2015▶ 20:2720 VC FF 026: Ryan Hoover, Founder @ ProductHunt on Relationship Building, Habit Forming and The Vision for ProductHunt
PredictionPartly held up
Hoover: Product Hunt will expand to all passion categories within 5 years
“In five years, you'll see Product Hunt turn into a community and a site for all kinds of people and all kinds of things. And it will be a place where you can find all kinds of things from You know, whatever you're most passionate about, and you can find like-m…”
Ryan HooverDec 11, 2015▶ 29:2520 VC FF 026: Ryan Hoover, Founder @ ProductHunt on Relationship Building, Habit Forming and The Vision for ProductHunt
Insight
Hoover: Building online communities requires extensive manual outreach initially
“To make a community work, to build something like this, you need to really focus on the people in the beginning and do a lot of frankly manual, like labor, manual things to get it going.”
Ryan HooverDec 11, 2015▶ 3:5120 VC FF 026: Ryan Hoover, Founder @ ProductHunt on Relationship Building, Habit Forming and The Vision for ProductHunt
Insight
Hoover: Changing community platforms without warning upsets users
“Communities are kind of like a home, and when you move the furniture around, whether it's better or not, people are like, whoa, you moved the furniture, why didn't you ask me?”
Ryan HooverDec 11, 2015▶ 7:4620 VC FF 026: Ryan Hoover, Founder @ ProductHunt on Relationship Building, Habit Forming and The Vision for ProductHunt
Insight
Hoover: Product teams should act on user patterns, not individual feedback
“Like, we're going to look for patterns, and we're going to make changes, but there will inevitably be people that say, oh, like, this button shouldn't be here, and we're not going to move it just because they say this button shouldn't be here. Like, not all th…”
Ryan HooverDec 11, 2015▶ 9:5020 VC FF 026: Ryan Hoover, Founder @ ProductHunt on Relationship Building, Habit Forming and The Vision for ProductHunt
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Hoover: Product Hunt grew 50% month-over-month leading into YC
“Leading into, to the YC interview, we were growing 50% month over month”
Ryan HooverDec 11, 2015▶ 23:0920 VC FF 026: Ryan Hoover, Founder @ ProductHunt on Relationship Building, Habit Forming and The Vision for ProductHunt
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