It really depends on what you are launching. I still think for certain products (esp if you are targeting builders/founders) you can get customers from there.
That being said, as OP says, an upvote != a customer.
But it's still valuable for marketing. Here's how I think about it:
1. their mailing list which goes out to .. 100s of thousands at the least. Your ICP may not use PH every day but if they work in startups, they are likely to have an account.
2. people google your product and find the product hunt listing. It's good SEO. PH ads actually have done well in getting ICP customers for us.
3. [most important] product hunt is an alternative to a press release. the traditional way to launch something is to pick a day, get press, then amplify the heck out of it across all channels. getting press as a small startup is hard and often outside your control. You can use Product Hunt as your "press release", then tell everyone about your launch-investors, friends, customers, ask them to share on LI/Twitter etc. You get people talking about it. This is where most of the value lives.
what OP is describing in their post is sales which is obviously a more direct way to hit your ICP. but marketing also has its place. especially in a world where your ICP is getting bombarded by sales reps, automated SDRs, etc
Former dbx employee here— they always wanted to do it but it is technically challenging to build a fully functional product here accounting for things like formatting/comments/etc. when you have such a large enterprise user base there are often trade offs - ship a basic prototype and risk customer confusion/complaints or invest lots of resources and draw away from other projects
For sure - we're trying to be really thoughtful of maintaining the high quality community aspect. We're actually experimenting with student internships, and have a pilot with MIT for their January externship.
That being said, as OP says, an upvote != a customer.
But it's still valuable for marketing. Here's how I think about it:
1. their mailing list which goes out to .. 100s of thousands at the least. Your ICP may not use PH every day but if they work in startups, they are likely to have an account.
2. people google your product and find the product hunt listing. It's good SEO. PH ads actually have done well in getting ICP customers for us.
3. [most important] product hunt is an alternative to a press release. the traditional way to launch something is to pick a day, get press, then amplify the heck out of it across all channels. getting press as a small startup is hard and often outside your control. You can use Product Hunt as your "press release", then tell everyone about your launch-investors, friends, customers, ask them to share on LI/Twitter etc. You get people talking about it. This is where most of the value lives.
what OP is describing in their post is sales which is obviously a more direct way to hit your ICP. but marketing also has its place. especially in a world where your ICP is getting bombarded by sales reps, automated SDRs, etc