Josh Constine

Use press as a tool by helping journalists do their job

Press rarely drives sustainable users, but it worked for Product Hunt because TechCrunch readers were exactly Product Hunt's audience. Hoover fed journalists like Josh Constine cool new products, which earned backlinks and goodwill—being helpful kept Product Hunt top of mind.

“every now and then I would email someone at, let's say, Josh Constine at TechCrunch and say, hey, Josh, I know you're like really interested in consumer social. Here's this new app that we found through Product Hunt. It's really cool. And for me, it was hopefully it was helpful. In some cases they're like, oh, cool, Ryan, you know, whatever. In other cases they're like, oh, that's really cool. Can you introduce me to the founder?”

Steal thisFeed journalists genuinely useful leads in their beat; the backlinks and goodwill follow naturally.