一家网站每月增长70%的秘密

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.

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。

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.

像亨特o沃克、戴夫o麦克卢尔、大卫o蒂希、互联网新闻博客Mashable创始人皮特o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o克罗利（Foursquare）、大卫o莫林（Path）、马克o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%。

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.

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。

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.

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。

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.

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o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。

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.”

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o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”。

“What an amazing shift,” he wrote.

“这实在是种很神奇的转变。”他写道。

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.

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。

The infectious positive attitude of Hoover and his nine-person team comes through on the site and in its community. They chime in frequently with positive feedback, curate themed newsletters, host personal, jokey podcasts, and gather influencers together for brunch events. You can tell they genuinely love apps, and in turn, they’ve attracted a community of app-lovers.

胡佛及其9人团队的积极态度成功地感染了整个网站和社区。他们经常在讨论中插入一些正面的回应，策划不同主题的新闻通讯，主持轻松幽默的个人播客，还召集影响力人士聚餐。你可以看出他们是发自真心地热爱应用程序，并因此吸引了另一批应用程序的爱好者。

Product Hunt hasn’t gone without notice on Hacker News. A post on Hacker News announcing the site was met with criticism of its design. When the company joined Y Combinator, the top comment on Hacker News asked, “How is Product Hunt even a business?” calling the decision “another disappointing move.”

Product Hunt的发展也在Hacker News上引起了关注。Hacker News上一个公布Product Hunt上线消息的帖子里，评论者们对其网站设计进行了抨击。在公司在加入Y Combinator时，Hacker News上被顶到首位的评论质问道：“Product Hunt竟然也能算得上是一项业务？”并称这一决策为“又一次令人失望的行动”。

Ever positive, Hoover says the business question is “a valid piece of criticism.” He acknowledges that a business catering to the small tech and startup community doesn’t seem like a billion-dollar idea. Further, “[Hacker News members] might see Product Hunt as a copycat,” he says. “We’re not solving a clear, obvious need, like ‘This saves lives,’ or, ‘This has X million in revenue per month.’ Obviously there is skepticism.” But he counters that any investment in a consumer-facing tech startup, including Facebook and Twitter, is less obvious in the beginning. “It’s very much based on emotions,” he says.

永远保持积极态度的胡佛表示，大家提到的业务问题是“一条有意义的批评”。他承认，Product Hunt只是为科技界和初创界的小规模社区提供服务，这听起来确实不像一个价值百万美元的创意。不仅如此，“（Hacker News的用户）可能把Product Hunt看作是山寨货，”他说，“我们并不是在解决一项清晰明确的需求，类似于‘这能拯救生命’或者‘这能在每个月创收几百万’等等。这自然会引发外界的质疑。”但是他反驳道，包括Facebook和Twitter在内，任何投给面向消费者的科技初创公司的投资，在最初都是比较盲目的。“这是很受情感驱使的决定。”他说。

He has plans to expand Product Hunt into other categories, including gaming, an industry he’s familiar with as a consumer and as director of product at PlayHaven. As for the business model, Hoover imagines Product Hunt will monetize with a fairly straightforward advertising model. Today the site makes opportunistic revenue through job postings. Eventually, Hoover says he’d like to see Product Hunt own the transaction part of its recommendations, allowing people to directly buy the digital products they find on the site.

他计划进一步拓展Product Hunt，涉足其他数个领域，其中也包括游戏。作为一名消费者和手游平台PlayHaven的产品总监，他对这个行业十分熟悉。至于具体的商业模式，胡佛的设想是，Product Hunt会通过相当直接的广告模式来实现货币化。目前，该网站是通过发布招聘信息获取投机收入的。胡佛表示，他希望Product Hunt到最后能够实现站内推荐产品的交易环节，让人们能在站内直接购买他们在这里找到的数码产品。

But Hoover doesn’t have to worry about money just yet. Today, he will reveal that Product Hunt has raised $1 million in venture funding from A-Grade Investments (the investment fund of Ashton Kutcher), Cowboy Ventures, CrunchFund, Google Ventures, Greylock Discovery Fund, Slow Ventures, SV Angel, betaworks, Tradecraft, Vayner RSE, and Ludlow Ventures as well as angel investors Abdur Chowdhury, Andrew Chen, Brenden Mulligan, Jack Altman, Naval Ravikant, NirEyal and Y Combinator (summer 2014 batch; its sum includes the standard YC investment.) The company also announced an iPhone app, built by iOS developer David McKinney, which adapts the site’s functions for mobile devices.

不过胡佛目前还不必为钱的事发愁。他在8月21日公开宣布，Product Hunt已经募得了100万美元的资金，投资方有A级投资（A-Grade Investments，阿什顿o库彻创立的投资基金）、牛仔风投（Cowboy Ventures）、CrunchFund、谷歌风投（Google Ventures）、格雷洛克发现基金（Greylock Discovery Fund）、慢风投（Slow Ventures）、天使投资公司SV Angel、创业工厂兼风投公司Betaworks、Tradecraft、Vayner RSE和勒德洛风投（Ludlow Ventures），此外还有天使投资方阿卜杜勒o乔杜里、陈春、布伦登o穆里根、杰克o奥尔特曼、纳瓦尔o拉维坎特、尼尔o厄雅和Y Combinator（2014年夏季入驻；总额中包括标准的YC投资额）。该公司还发布了一款iPhone应用，开发方为iOS开发人员戴维o麦金尼，让该网站的功能在移动设备上也能正常使用。

Product Hunt’s beauty is in its simplicity, which means the site can easily be copied. Hoover believes its real value is in the high-quality community he’s attracted. Keeping the community’s quality high as he attempts to break into the mainstream may be his greatest challenge. He believes Product Hunt can tap into a market of app-lovers who don’t consider themselves early adopters but are anyway. Given how pervasive smartphones are today, “the early adopter thing is shrinking,” he says.

Product Hunt之美在于一切从简，而这意味着该网站很容易遭到复制。胡佛认为，Product Hunt的真正价值在于他所吸引来的高质量用户社区。在试图打入主流领域的同时继续保持社区的高质量水准，这或许就是他所面对的最大挑战。他相信Product Hunt能够打入应用爱好者的市场，这些爱好者并不把自己视作早期采用者（译注：指具有冒险精神、喜欢尝试新产品的人），但不管怎样他们的确就是。鉴于智能手机如今已是如此无处不在，“所谓的早期采用者已经越来越少了，”他说道。