Top-🔟 learnings after first Product Hunt launch

Been creating a mashup of Notion + DocSend for the last 5 months and just launched on Product Hunt last week. Some learnings... 1. Being nice and giving of your time can pay off when you need to ask a favour...but it still feels weird to ask people to check out your app and upvote. Slack groups, I'm active one were a great place plus DM's in Linkedin to people I knew and had relationships with. Go into pitch/sales mode. Lean into the discomfort. 2. You still need to have a good sense of your target customer and the problem you solve. Even if vague. Hopefully, the launch will bring some clarity but just because your Mom/Best Friend/Partner created a PH account and gave you an upvote doesn't mean you learned anything or get closer to your goal of PMF... 3. ...but some of those people might surprisingly see value in what you create in ways you did not expect. But they need to use the product not just give you a vote. 4. The feedback is the most critical so get someone to leave a comment on your PH Post to get that ball rolling. I had people DM'ing me feedback in Slack channels etc. but after I finally asked one of them to post the feedback in the PH Posting it got the ball rolling with others. Energy went up. 5. People will hit you up almost immediately to "get you to the top of PH" as a service and you will consider it. I don't think I will go this route, as with the points above, it just feels like gaming votes and not real feedback (still not sure if this is being too idealistic 🤷‍♂️). 6. Message people you know directly and ask them to look at the page and upvote (PH frowns upon asking for upvotes on public forums and it makes sense). I posted in the general channel of Slack groups where I knew people well. Many still did not take action until I DM'd them. Some of the people I DM'd have shown interest in what we've built in ways I didn't expect. You have to go into pitch/sales mode and be ok with it. I tried my best to customize each DM based on a rough template and be genuine (see Learning 1). 7. PH must use the point from profile reputation heavily because we had far more upvotes and comments than products far above us and we were never able to break into the top-20. Got stuck around 25-27 most of the day. It makes sense or else it would be easy to game the system. 8. So being on PH and checking out and interacting with products and people in advance likely pays off big time if the goal is maximum exposure. Luckily you can launch again so I'm getting more active in the community to see how it goes in preparation for future postings. 9. The goal of breaking into the top listing of the PH page for the day is something to strive for but there is a lot of learning even if you don't. At the very least it creates an event to give you a momentum push and get the team aligned and focused on what you're building and where you should be going. It's a "get out of the building" action and the more of these you do the better your chance of success IMO. 10. Zero-to-One product development in a new startup is brutally hard. I went from feeling energized to exhausted, and now back to energized all within 24hrs. Go on a walk after DM'ing and hustling all day. Have a good night's sleep and get back at it in the morning. Your morning team debrief may just be the thing that turns everything in the right direction. Check us out on Product Hunt 👇 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bobson/