The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 45 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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…”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
Hoover: Product Hunt Grew 50% Month-over-Month Leading Into YC Application
“We, if I'm not mistaken, I think we were like 50% month over month. And that's not counting like with hundred users in month one, but it was like over the course of a few months with some users.”
Hoover: Wirecutter never raised a full venture capital round
“They never raised like a real VC full round.”
Hoover: Gabe Rivera has never raised outside capital for Techmeme
“What Gabe's done with TechMe, which has been around forever. You know, it's been, it's basically a force and like a thing that everyone in technology knows about... And it doesn't, he hasn't raised money.”
Hoover: Massive influx of new software products will be built by 2024
“In fact, in the next five years, we're going to see a ridiculous number of products being built, partly because it's more accessible, it's easier, you don't actually need any money to build anything.”
Hoover: Andreessen Horowitz preemptively led Product Hunt's Series A during YC
“We raised a million before, like, going into YC before demo day, when we were targeting, like, 400 K, but we got great people around us, and then fast forward through demo day Marc Andreessen reached out kind of in the middle, and he'd been following it, and w…”
Hoover: Product Hunt grew user visits 50% MoM in early months
“It was obviously still very small because it was pretty early days, but we were seeing about 50% month-over-month growth in total, like, top-line user visits. And that was consistent for the first, I don't know, two, three, four months.”
Hoover: Product Hunt started as a 20-minute email list setup
“So built this email list, sent it out, got a few hundred subscribers initially, and it took me 20 minutes to set up.”
Hoover: Casey Neistat used Product Hunt's Ship for Beme Panels
“Like Casey Neistat and his new app, they used it to start capturing interest for beam panels or new app that's coming out.”
Hoover: Ship is Product Hunt's first paid product since job listings
“So historically we've never really charged for anything. Outside of long, long time ago, once upon a time we did post for charge people for job postings, but then we stopped that to focus entirely on building the community and the audience. Now we're shifting …”
Hoover: AngelList's original MVP was an email digest
“AngelList, ironically, was one of those. Like, AngelList's MVP essentially was an email digest.”
Hoover: Co-founders must never look like they have conflict during YC interviews
“The last thing you want is two founders to look like they already have founder problems.”
Hoover: Product Hunt quietly killed its podcast category
“We actually kind of quietly killed podcasts.”
Hoover: Over half of Product Hunt's community is outside the US
“More than half the product and community is actually outside the U S”
Hoover: Manual Twitter outreach converted 80% of makers to join Product Hunt
“And so when we realized that I would every morning go on Twitter and like search for their Twitter username and say Hey Jill, your product is, is over here. People are talking about it. Do you want to join and answer questions? And like, 80% of the time they'd…”
Hoover: Paris produces disproportionately design-centric tech products
“I think for whatever reason, Paris is very design centric in general. So you'll see a lot of design related or like beautiful looking products coming from Paris or France in general.”
Hoover: Product Hunt would not exist without his pre-built audience
“If I didn't have, you know, this first few hundred people willing to sign up that I had built that audience for over several years, I don't think Product Hunt would exist today.”
Hoover: AngelList platform sets up funds for $12k replacing $100k costs
“So they do all of this work that would normally cost maybe a 100,000 dollars to set up all for like 12,000 dollars
and they take a piece of the carry.”
Hoover: Product Hunt began as an unincorporated email list side project
“It started off as a side project and it was right between startups. I was leaving in another one and kind of tinkering and interviewing at other startups. Started product time. It started off as an email list. Got some traction there. That then turned into a w…”
Hoover: Early Product Hunt made roughly $4,000 monthly from job ads
“And so we did job ads and made like 4000 dollars a month.”