I'm a 3x founder, YC alum, and early-stage investor. I was lucky to back Zapier, Clever, Omaze, and a few others at the seed stage.

This summer I'm spending time helping early-stage founders and learning from them. If you're raising or planning to raise, I'm happy to review your deck and offer honest feedback to help you sharpen the story from an investor's perspective.

In return, I'd love to ask you a few quick questions about your fundraising experience. What's working, what's frustrating, and how you're thinking about it. It helps me better understand how founders are raising today and where the process breaks down.

If you're up for it, feel free to reply here or message me privately. You can email me directly if you like mike.stachowiak@gmail.com
No catch. Just hoping it's helpful for both of us.

Hi PH community,

My team and I just launched Byterover a self-improving memory layer for coding agents on AI IDEs like Cursor, Windsurf, and more.

We ve been sitting at #1 for the past 18 hours since launch. Super grateful but I also think we could ve done a lot better with better prep.

Hey PH community! In two weeks, I m launching my app, SUN, here on Product Hunt. It s been a journey, and I m now focused on how to get meaningful visibility and upvotes. I ve been digging into what others have done and came across these 5 common strategies:

1. DM outreach on LinkedIn

2. Joining Product Hunt-focused WhatsApp groups

3. Engaging in Facebook groups for PH launches

4. Running social media ads that link directly to the PH page

5. Buying Product Hunt ads (starting at $5,000 )

Has anyone here tried any of these?

What worked? What felt like a waste of time or money?

As the founder of an early-stage edtech startup, I've been a little "overwhelmed" with which social media platforms to stick with. I'm not sure which ones to invest most of my time into and which to steer clear of.

Given that target audiences vary between different companies, how successful have you found TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, and even Product Hunt in gaining traction for your company? Have you spent the money investing in advertisements or "promotions?" Was it worth it?
I've gotten over 100k+ views on some videos, but they haven't been particularly effective in terms of conversions.

Hey PH fam!

Seriously is anyone else drowning in frameworks, libraries, plugins, microservices, and AI-powered everything?

I want to hear from my fellow founders who are boostrapping their ventures. In a world where raising funds, burning cash, chasing exits get all the limelight; bootstrapped founders rarely get attention.

I've personally known several founders who are happily running their $20 - $100K MRR businesses either as solo founders or with a small team and highly profitable.

Hey everyone,

Last year I released my first app and published it to the App Store, and although it took me way longer than planned, I couldn t be more grateful!

Backstory: I started developing a mental health app about a year ago and I added a coming soon banner to ProductHunt. I was planning on releasing the app in October and September had just started, so it was the perfect amount of time to get some users on the waiting list. However, at the same time I created the banner, I was just enrolling in the developer program and it really took too long. I lost track of time and my product launched here, but I didn't even have it on the App Store yet, so I lost those users in the waiting list, since they opened an almost empty launch.

For those who don't know:

Instead of New Year's resolutions, I set goals at the beginning of each quarter to accomplish in the next 90 days and evaluate them at the end.

In yesterday's post, I shared goals and achievements for Q2 2025.

It makes me more committed to sticking to them, and sometimes it is more sustainable.

Feel free to join:
What challenges and goals do you set for yourself to achieve in Q3 2025?

If you re launching a desktop app (Windows, macOS, or Linux), how do you prefer to distribute it? Some devs publish to official app stores like Microsoft Store, Mac App Store, or Snap/Flatpak. Others skip that entirely and just provide executable downloads directly from their website. Each route has pros and cons: App stores can build trust, offer updates, and sometimes bring in new users. But they also come with submission processes, review delays, and platform restrictions. Direct downloads give you full control and faster iteration, but some users might hesitate to install an app from a website, especially if it s not open source or well-known. I m building a cross-platform app and thinking carefully about this. Curious to hear from others: What do you prefer when launching or downloading desktop software? Any lessons learned from doing it one way or the other? Would love to hear your take. Especially if you ve had to balance visibility, user trust, and update flow.