1/ .@rrhoover wasn't a founder that investors typically like:

- He was solo.
- He was non-technical.

He built and sold @ProductHunt to @AngelList for $20M and is now a VC with @weekendfund.

Here are Ryan's smart tactics to build PH into an industry-known brand... 👇👇👇

2/ Ryan hated hourly pay because he was paid the same whether he did a good or bad job.

He hunted for cheap electronics and flipped them on eBay for a profit. He sold between $150k - $200k in merchandise in high school and college.

He learned he enjoyed hunting for products.

3/ Ryan used to blog a lot.

He knew email was a great channel for re-engaging his audience. His post "Email-First Startups" outlined companies that started as emails, and it went viral on Twitter and Hacker News.

However, the popular narrative was that email was dead and dumb.

4/ Being non-technical and contrarian, Ryan built an email list as Product Hunt's MVP.

He built it in 20 minutes and got a few hundred subscribers.

Email worked. All his users were active in their inboxes. Email let Ryan experiment with content in ways websites wouldn't allow.

5/ Ryan already built a small following from his years of writing about products and from helping @nireyal write "Hooked."

This following became Product Hunt's first few hundred users.