Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hoover: More B2B companies do well on Product Hunt than B2C
“Some people, they ask me, hey, like, I don't know, is Product Hunt, like, Do B to B companies do well there? And I'm like, yeah, like probably more B to B companies than B to C companies actually.”
Insight
Hoover: A product background is crucial for early-stage startup investing
“Having a product background, I think is one of the most important aspects of early stage startup investing. Meaning oftentimes when you're building a new company, there are a lot of risks and there's a lot of important things to nail, but it all Ultimately com…”
Insight
Hoover: Prioritizing dark mode before product-market fit is a red flag
“If a founder is prioritizing dark mode before they have product market fit too, it's like a big red flag for me. That's a little bit of a hot take. Some people are gonna hate me for that, but I don't know. I don't think dark mode matters for like, 99% of peopl…”
Insight
Hoover: Behind the confident mask, almost every company is internally chaotic
“Everyone has to wear this unfortunate mask is kind of the way I, what I used to describe it, this mask in Life and business where everything is going great and, you know, you're super confident. There are no problems. You got it all under control. And so the r…”
Opinion
Hoover: Tech culture defaults to immediately raising venture capital on an idea
“I think people who are in tech, especially are certain bubbles of tech. That's the default. It's like the first thing I do, I have an idea now let's go raise money.”
Insight
Hoover: Founders should use a ten-year commitment test before starting
“However, I think it's super important that founders see a line of sight to work on this for, I think my rule of thumb is a decade. Just do you see yourself working on this for a decade? And maybe it's not a decade that you actually work on it. It probably won'…”
Insight
Hoover: Startups should avoid innovating on too many operational fronts simultaneously
“When you're building a company, you probably don't want to innovate on too many things. Including like essentially how to build a product and build a team.”
What-if
Hoover: Product Hunt might not have needed venture capital if personally funded
“Product isn't the type of company that needs to raise a ton of money. It's also one which is not doesn't have like direct competitors in the sense of like an Uber and Lyft situation where raising is actually like kind of mandatory and you sort of have to build…”
Insight
Hoover: Founder CEOs cannot simply give notice and exit easily
“When you're at a company, you can put in two weeks notice, one month notice. You can move on as a founder CEO. You can't like, you really can't. Now you technically can, but you can't, it's really hard to exit.”
Insight
Hoover: Product launches are often better for recruiting than customer acquisition
“And a lot of people default to things like customer acquisition. Oh, I want to acquire customers. But sometimes that's actually not, it's not useful. Launch sometimes doesn't help with that. But there are many other reasons why you might want to launch. So cus…”
Insight
Hoover: Launch copy resonates better when written like casual conversation than PR speak
“One thing I've noticed among founders and just people in general is they tend to write like a PR person and not like a human and not like, you know, the way that I kind of describe Kind of a frame of writing, maybe your tagline for product or for your launch i…”
What-if
Hoover: Product Hunt should not have expanded horizontally beyond tech
“So that's one regret is we should not have tried to expand horizontally. We should have just focused entirely vertically and serve the tech community, you know, better and with more things, which is effectively what we're doing now.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hoover: Product Hunt did not monetize until after its AngelList acquisition
“We raised a seed in the series A, we had capital to grow, and we didn't actually try to make money until after we were acquired by AngelList.”
Insight
Hoover: Momentum is reflexive and critical in early-stage startups
“Momentum matters so much. And momentum is reflexive in that, you know, high momentum leads to more high momentum, low momentum leads to more low momentum, because there's this energy that, that kind of goes through companies where when there is momentum, when …”
Insight
Hoover: In VC, one winner can return 3-5x all other investments combined
“The power law of investing where it's in most people's situation. It's one company is returning. You could invest in a hundred companies. One of those companies is probably gonna return three to five X and the returns of all the others, maybe combined in some …”
Insight
Hoover: Early-career tech workers should choose San Francisco for serendipity
“If I was, you know, a new college grad or someone young and new and kind of tech industry, definitely San Francisco, you'll create a lot of serendipity. You'll, you'll meet a lot of people, but from a lifestyle perspective, LA LA, I just find more enjoyable.”
Opinion
Hoover: Consumer social and gaming startups have the highest failure rates
“I think like consumer social or gaming, like games, building games, probably like the hardest and the one filled with the most failures.”
Insight
Hoover: Building a consumer company without a unique insight is nearly impossible
“I think it's really hard to build a consumer company without some sort of unique insight, maybe impossible.”
Insight
Hoover: Targeting a narrow audience makes building and messaging easier for startups
“It's effectively the more narrow your idea generally, and this is where I throw in the big asterisks, like not for everything, there's always contextual differences, but generally the easier it is to build a great solution for those people, because now you can…”
Insight
Hoover: Aspiring investors can break in by building fantasy portfolios
“One thing you can also do is just like pretend angel invested and That doesn't mean that you're meeting the founder and like writing a chat, but you can write memos or you can like almost create a fantasy portfolio. And this is what Vedika before she joined, j…”
Disclosure
Hoover: $21M might be the largest fund Weekend Fund ever raises
“Our latest fund is twenty one million. And that might, I might change my mind on this, but that might be the biggest fund we ever raise. I might keep it around that same size for the next one, because it really allows us to be like really collaborative.”
Insight
Hoover: Raising venture capital is a one-way door founders should delay
“You can always raise venture later. Like it's a one way door. So I kind of want to delay that door, you know, for whatever I build next if I can.”
Assertion Supported
Hoover: Miami is cheaper all-in than the Bay Area and LA
“It's cheaper than the Bay Area. It's cheaper than LA. When you kind of counter Kind of like all in costs.”
Insight
Hoover: Product launches serve as overlooked team morale milestones
“One of them is team morale. And this might, I think this is overlooked. And I would also encourage founders not to get their team to I would say you shouldn't be motivated to launch a product just to get like the likes on Twitter and the upvotes on product hun…”
