Ryan Hoover on Growth Flywheels, Building Communities, Helping Founders, LP Investing
Show notes
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week. Ryan Hoover is the Founder of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund. Ryan’s probably helped more founders launch their products than anyone else on Earth. We talk about starting Product Hunt as an email list, and he open sources the growth flywheel that propelled it to one of the most important places in technology. Ryan unpacks how he built and scaled a community around the product, how online communities have changed over time, how we’re thinking about software in the age of AI (tech will change, human behavior won’t), and how status has changed in Silicon Valley. We also talk about starting Weekend Fund to invest in other founders, his first 400x investment, investing in consumer health, and why he started investing in other funds. Thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get $250 signing-up here. Timestamps: (5:52) Helping founders with software (15:36) Early ideas for Product Hunt in 2013 (19:14) Starting as a social email list (26:26) Product Hunt’s growth flywheel (31:15) AI won’t change human behavior (34:12) An audience is not a community (36:42) Why every community needs utility (38:52) Communities have shifted towards group chats (40:10) How AI changes building products (49:35) Importance of craft (52:30) Starting Weekend Fund, Ryan’s 400x investment (56:57) Weekend Fund’s software experiments (59:26) What makes Ryan’s investing unique (1:02:16) Why Ryan has a small fund (1:07:41) Peptides, GLP-1’s, Ketamine (1:18:57) Investing in funds (1:20:53) Ways LPs can add value for GPs (1:23:05) How status has changed in Silicon Valley (1:31:37) Backing founders with secrets, why failing is hard Referenced Weekend Fund Product Hunt Wayve self-driving cars The community trap Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products Get Your Wish - Porter Robinson Social Utilities Silicon Valley’s new status symbols Selfish Investing Follow Ryan Twitter LinkedIn Personal Website Signature Block Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.
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