"welcome to the podcast guys how's it going doing well how are you good good um all right Ryan so for those of our listeners who don't know who you are what do you work on so started a company uh 5 yea..."

"because I remember it so well um from being there walk me through from the formation of product hunt into applying to YC and getting into that interview that is already a blur you you're not sure who'..."

"mistaken I think we were like 50% month over month um and that's not counting like with 100 users in month one but it was like over the course of a few months with some some users and so it was and ac..."

"doing Venture financing um if they have a side project working especially if they're making money and they never will have like they can support themselves on it and they can basically have the job fo..."

"equals software right so like because I'm making profitable software therefore it is a startup but it can equally be a small business yeah semantically you can call it a startup too I just maybe it's ..."

"I describe it as like maker communities and I would put um you know prant in that category Indie hackers lpath um is certainly one of those and a bunch of others and these are sort of communities that..."

"um okay but but not all companies that go through YC ultimately raise money afterward right like zappier is a good example that is correct yeah right and so and they predated product hunt right so I t..."

"raising with maybe not as good of a firm with maybe not as strong of numbers and that money when would allow us to continue for several years you know building the company and hiring and and building ..."

"sometimes when there's social products that take off um everyone is on them all the time I mean I'm not going to yeah I can think of where there was like big things that were hot and then everyone got..."

"super predictive at demo day so so anyway I just like I remember that too when you were everyone was like so excited about product hunt and everyone wanted to work with you and they put tons of work i..."

"uh and I've seen you know there's some I'm trying to think back on the batch in who's who's yeah who what what were you summer 14 summer 14 yeah yeah so I think uh genko is Extreme like they probably ..."

"just don't maybe like I don't understand biotech like I it's it's less exciting for me simply for that reason because I just don't understand it and you don't know where the Market's going right where..."

"successful um well there's a lot of famous cases of people that we fund and then that end up pivoting into something wildly different and that ends up being pretty good and so my my example that I had..."

"have been a struggle do you remember what that conversation was like cuz I think this is a it's a super common question we get for the podcast people who change their ideas what were those conversatio..."

"personally so do you think there's a way to play it over again where you could have should have would have monetized or expanded faster cuz again this is especially if we're talking about non-venture ..."

"totally fair so the things that I I I think we made a mistake on that I I take responsibility for are a few different things one of them one of them is we should have dedicated a little bit of time an..."

"yeah I mean I'm trying to think of a scenario where that would be hurting their company like maybe if it was affecting growth negatively somehow right like giant banner ads for jobs I feel like in a l..."

"on this again I'm just picturing back in the batch you kind of could have gone deeper on products like really deep on just Tech products and done like I don't know partnership there's ways you could g..."

"I do remember the slide that presented at demo day actually with sort of the long I think it might have been the last slide which was like the Future Vision which was okay we're starting with tech tha..."

"and like being like this is yeah like well there's I don't foret I forget what I exactly said but it was like I too but I remember seeing you in the Green Room yeah and and everyone has like you can i..."

"unsuccessful in getting them spun up to be like their own Standalone like Community where people could you know find the best games or or really visit on a daily basis for that type of content do you ..."

"somebody should build it um what we're now focusing on is actually doubling so that was one horizontal approach go really wide build you know a network of properties potentially uh instead what we foc..."

"just thinking through you know back in the day when you had everything lined up and ready were there things that you could have been excited about that were not selling out your vision of what it coul..."

"one there's also like Kickstarter you could have been like oh let's help people like you know imagine that you could remember those experiments people did where if enough people took an action it woul..."

"like super fascinated on thinking through just what a great thing you had and all the ways like like I've been in silon Valley a long time and it's just like these little micro decisions that is a dif..."

"with something like what we built where we have a community of people like people really don't care if the upot button looks a little bit shinier like they're going to use it or not because of the con..."

"year we have three kpis actually that we measure uh revenue is one of them that was our number one priority last year not because we are running out of money it's because we just want to build a model..."

"process down where we'll have usually one engineer to start with on it and they they drive the project forward alongside like Julie or Dan on the design side and so we're able to like do a lot of proj..."

"ecosystem going forward yeah I see uh y see applications along those lines of basically remote work is a big Trend and people are trying to think about tools and like any there's a bunch of ways to at..."

"yeah so I was curious about this so there are a bunch of questions basically people asking for advice on like what makes a su a successful product on product hunt and like did you guys ever consider g..."

"come to mind uh one more recent actually and this isn't a startup actually it's not a company but it's there there's a number of um kind of self-described like Indie makers or or people who are just e..."

"immediately and and uh yet at the same time it required Ben and the team to be thoughtful and like honest with themselves like they could have run they could have run out of money and run the company ..."

"again I would put you in you did it like no one like no one told you hey you should go make product hunt you should make this email list like you weren't trying I don't think trying to please investor..."

"lot of people tend to now I don't want to uh uh some people have family some people have Financial burdens there's like things like that that certainly are debilitating but I think for a lot of people..."