Insight
Hoover: VCs judge consumer startups on current revenue once monetized
“Ultimately, the challenge is always, especially with consumer kind of focused startup is as soon as you start making money, then VCs will start judging you based on that revenue today. And so strategically, there's some challenges there, which is an unfortunat…”
Opinion
Hoover: Living in virtual reality worlds will be a good thing
“I think the world where we live in VR is actually a good thing. And I know a lot of people get really scared and nervous about like a future where we all live in like a ready player one or at least like some sort of virtual world like that. I actually think it…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hoover: Eventually a majority of people will spend their lives in VR
“I also almost don't see a future where at some point that's where a majority of people spend their lives because we're already pretty close.”
Disclosure
Hoover rejected early investor pressure to build a Product Hunt VC fund
“A few different investors and people suggested, Hey, you should start a product hunt fund. You should build a fund on top of product hunt, invest in, use the data in the community and everything to source and find really early stage opportunities. And I was pr…”
Insight
Hoover: Product Redesigns Are Often a Trap That Won't Move Metrics
“When you do raise a lot of money and you feel like you have infinite runway you should treat it like you don't. And truthfully, there's some things that, that I prioritized on the team because I wanted it Myself, like some redesign work that we did, which rede…”
Opinion
Hoover: ICOs raise more capital with zero equity dilution
“People are launching an ICO instead of going to VCs and You know, the deals that they're getting, it's like it's unheard of. Like you basically are getting way more money and you don't have investors to pay back. Like you own everything. And I mean, there's ju…”
Assertion Supported
Hoover: At most 50% of products on Product Hunt are consumer
“People think that most of product hunt is actually consumer as well. It's probably, I don't know, 50% at most is consumer. There's a lot of B to B stuff on there.”
Insight
Hoover: Approaching ideas as side projects is far better than overthinking business models
“And when you put your frame of mind of like a side project, first you start to settle. Most people start to settle in, well, what would I want to build or what would I, what could I use? And it's just a lot better way to start. I think personally.”
Insight
Hoover: Tech discovery communities cannot be easily replicated across other verticals
“I was a little bit naive, I think, in thinking that we could quickly replicate communities in these different verticals and the nature of even just game discovery is quite different than product and tech discovery.”
Disclosure
Hoover: Product Hunt achieved profitability in 2018
“And so we're, we hit profitability last year.”
Insight
Hoover: Friends provide terrible, overly positive feedback on new products
“And when you're building something and you want feedback, at best you ask your friends and your friends give you really Terrible positive advice. Cause they don't want to hurt your feelings.”
Opinion
Hoover: The Twitter social graph remains underutilized in product design
“The product design was built for leveraging the Twitter graph, which I think today still is underutilized, actually”
Insight
Hoover: Live video products face severe retention hurdles due to content creation friction
“The problem was the product itself was not retentive, and, you know, most people are really bad, including myself, at live video. It's just really hard to create good content, and to watch live video, you have to watch it when it's live, too. So there's like a…”
Insight
Observing a startup ship rapidly for two weeks drives Hoover's investment decisions
“Progress is like everything, and just, even if it's, it doesn't have to be, you know, 50% month over month growth, but I've invested in companies after following them for even just two or three weeks have given me more confidence based on what they're shipping…”
Insight
Hoover: Active usage is undeniable proof for non-technical founders
“If you can demonstrate data like that, it's hard to argue. It's hard to say that, oh, actually, no, this isn't useful. If you're demonstrating that people are using your product, then that's ultimate proof.”
Insight
Hoover: Technical founders should often test ideas with no-code tools first
“And even if you are technical, it's actually in many cases wise to start testing with those types of non-technical tools so that you can put something out there sooner and earlier.”
Insight
Hoover: Email MVPs are easier to iterate than software built in code
“It's a very simple way to MVP something and see if people actually open it and click on it. It's also very malleable. So every single morning or every day when you send that email, you can change the copy. You can try different things. Whereas when you put som…”
Insight
Hoover: Podcast discovery dynamics do not fit software discovery platforms
“Discovering the way you consume podcasts is wildly different than you discover an app or a product. It's also very frequent. Like there's a new podcast every week or more than that. So like the dynamics didn't really work. With just shoving it into the product…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hoover: A community-driven podcast discovery leader will inevitably emerge
“From a market perspective, I don't see a world where we don't have something like that in podcasts, like a place where people can discover and engage and almost geek out about podcasts together. To date, those exist in like on Reddit to some extent and, Variou…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hoover: Tech will see more distributed teams driven by Slack and Zoom
“I believe we'll see more and more distributed teams, more remote workers. It's sort of this movement towards that direction. And I think more people will be willing to build teams like that because it's easier to work remotely with Slack and like various video…”
Insight
Hoover: Product Hunt upvotes do not determine startup success
“The number of upvotes you get on product hunt honestly doesn't mean whether they're gonna be successful or not.”
Insight
Hoover: Most successful startups only take off by year five to seven
“Some of the most successful startups really are like until year five, six, seven is when they really are taking off.”
Disclosure
Hoover: Raised $3M Weekend Fund writing $50k to $200k checks
“So I raised a fund after talking to Naval and a bunch of other people three million dollar fund and just investing in, of course, early stage companies. Everything from 50,000 to 200,000.”
Insight
Hoover: Pumping your chest before pitching boosts confidence and calms nerves
“Someone gave me this advice actually during YC is before you do anything like that, before you do a pitch, pump your chest physically. It might've been Kevin Hale that said this. Yeah, I could be wrong. So sorry, Kevin, if I'm putting words in your mouth, but …”
