SoKal
My Product Hunt Launch Was Nothing Like I Expected
I assumed everyone launching on Product Hunt had a team. Or at least a network. People who'd wake up at midnight to upvote, comment, share.
I'd already asked my friends for plenty of favors, like downloading SoKal, the app I'd been building for three months, just to test it and give me feedback, which is always a toss-up. Most default to the "oh, this is cool"… never opens it again. I didn't want to ask them to create an account on a website they'd never heard of to upvote what, to them, was just another app idea I was obsessing over again.
And even if they would have, there was no chance they were waking up at midnight to do it. I'd be left on read for sure. By the time they saw the message the next morning, I'd already be buried at the bottom of the page anyway.
So I Set It and Forgot It
So I set it to auto-release and went about my business. My one comforting thought: at least I'd get a backlink to Google out of it. Oh, and everyone gets one upvote by default, right? That's nice. Maybe I'd ask a friend later so I wasn't at the absolute bottom.
If I had woken up the next morning and seen three upvotes, including my own, I would have been happy. Fifteen would have had me over the moon.
4am
I woke up around 4am to use the bathroom. Before going back to sleep, I figured I'd check what the page looked like.
66 upvotes. SoKal was sitting at #19.
I didn't go back to sleep. I made coffee, opened my laptop, and started a security audit on the backend. By the time I had to leave for my day job, I'd been working for hours.
Two Downloads
The launch ended at #29 overall. On one end, I'd told myself three upvotes would make me happy and I got 66 in a few hours. On the other end, I figured a top 30 finish on Product Hunt meant at least 50 to 100 people would try the app.
I got two downloads.
Which is cool. It just goes to show I still have a lot to figure out — but I'm enjoying doing it.
Be one of the next downloads
SoKal is the social calendar I'm building. Try it for yourself.
