一家网站每月增长70%的秘密

    莱恩•胡佛是全美所有企业家艳羡的对象。许多初创公司摸爬滚打数年、烧掉数百万美元的投资才能得到的认可度，胡佛的初创公司却在短短九个月内就已牢牢在握。更让人不忿的是，他做到这一切所凭借的，不过是一个抄袭社交新闻网站Reddit创意的粗劣网站，而且他的团队只用了不到一个星期就搭建起了这个网站。但是这个名为Product Hunt的网站却得到了硅谷最有影响力的权力掮客们的关注，最近更是从他们那里获得了真金白银的投资。

    像亨特•沃克、戴夫•麦克卢尔、大卫•蒂希、互联网新闻博客Mashable创始人皮特•卡什莫尔等，这些风险投资人会利用Product Hunt来发现新产品；而丹尼斯•克罗利（Foursquare）、大卫•莫林（Path）、马克•库班（AXS TV）等创始人则会参与其中，讨论自己的产品。该网站每月的绝对访客达到了25万人，并在过去一个月里，为各类产品总共输送了170万次的访问量。网站推送的新闻通讯邮件读者逾5.1万人，点击率达41%。

    有意思的是，那些每日精选的顶尖产品的出品方们纷纷表示，投资者和潜在合作伙伴纷沓而来，对他们倾注的兴趣简直足以将他们淹没。已有数十名该网站的用户利用该网站的API做成了各式各样的衍生网络工具。网站以每个月70%的速度保持着增长。各方创始人私下表示，在Product Hunt上发布消息已经取代科技博客TechCrunch，成为了他们更为青睐的公布产品上线的方式。

    那么胡佛是怎么做到这一切的？答案就是：好的时机加上若干电子邮件推送技巧，以及出色的社区建设能力，最后再借助一批形象正面的大师级人物的帮助。

    事实表明，科技界亟需一处新的聚集地，而Product Hunt的出现正好满足了这一需求。长久以来，企业孵化器Y Combinator设立的网络留言板Hacker News一直是硅谷各初创公司实际上的线上社区。今年上半年，Y Combinator的总裁萨姆•阿尔特曼就曾说过，他估计这个留言板上的用户群体整体价值可能有5亿美元。

    但是近几年来，这处线上社区已经沦落为一处充斥着负面情绪的地方，不时还会出现一些带有敌意的评论。上个月，知名风险投资家马克•安德里森在这处留言板上诘问道，这里怎么从Y Combinator的讨论板演变成了“任何YC公司相关帖下的第一条评论一定是有人在对该公司狂喷的讨论板”。

    “这实在是种很神奇的转变。”他写道。

    Product Hunt并没有打算在各方面与Hacker News反其道而行，但是就很多方面而言，它现在所扮演的却正是这样的角色。这里基本不是一个自由自在的匿名社区。该网站发展得十分谨慎，在胡佛及其团队的精心策划下，邀请了一批硅谷的影响力人士成为用户并发表评论。其他人可以投票赞同某产品，但只有受邀用户才能发表评论。由于评论者多为投资者、记者和科技界知名创始人这样的公众人物，他们更愿意收起自己的负面评论，而不是随意乱喷。但是这种模式并不利于网站的拓展，因此胡佛决定，最佳的发展方式就是允许这些评论者邀请自己的朋友参与评论。

    Ryan Hoover is the envy of entrepreneurs around the country. Many startups toil for years, burning through millions of investment dollars, to get the kind of recognition Hoover’s startup has garnered in just nine months. What’s worse, he’s done it with a flimsy Reddit knock-off website his team built in less than a week. That site, called Product Hunt, has captured the attention, and as of today, the investment dollars, of Silicon Valley’s most influential power brokers.

    Venture investors like Hunter Walk, Dave McClure, David Tisch, and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore use Product Hunt to discover new products, and founders like Dennis Crowley (Foursquare), Dave Morin (Path), and Mark Cuban (AXS TV) have jumped in to discuss their products. The site has 250,000 monthly unique visitors and has sent 1.7 million visits to products in the last month. More than 51,000 people read the site’s newsletter with a 41% open rate.

    Anecdotally, the purveyors of the top products of each day report they’ve been flooded with inbound interest from investors and potential partners. Already dozens of members have hacked together Web tools based on the site’s API. The site grows by 70% each month. Founders are whispering that placement on Product Hunt has replaced TechCrunch as their preferred method of announcing their launch.

    So how did Hoover do it? Good timing, mixed with some email hustle and community-building prowess, topped off with a master class in positivity.

    As it turns out, the tech community was hungry for a new gathering place, and Product Hunt played directly into its desire. Hacker News, the message board of accelerator program Y Combinator, has long been the de facto online community for Silicon Valley startups. Earlier this year, Y Combinator’s president, Sam Altman, said he thought the message board might be with $500 million.

    But in recent years, the community has devolved into petty negativity and occasionally hostile commentary. Last month, the prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen took to the message board to ask how it had evolved from a Y Combinator discussion board to “the discussion board where the first comment on any post involving a YC company is reliably someone crapping on it.”

    “What an amazing shift,” he wrote.

    Product Hunt did not intend to be the anti-Hacker News, but in many ways that’s what it has become. It is hardly a freewheeling anonymous community. The site has grown very carefully, by inviting a group of Valley influencers curated by Hoover and his team to join and comment. Outsiders can up-vote products, but only invitees can comment. Because the commenters are mostly public-facing figures like investors, journalists, and prominent founders in the tech community, they’re more likely to keep negative comments to themselves rather than trash something. That doesn’t scale well, so Hoover has decided the best way to grow is to let commenters invite friends into the commenting pool.