LA Venture Podcast: Product Launch Guru Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund
On this week's episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, hear from Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt and investor at Weekend Fund.
Product Hunt began as a passion project email list and grew into a website. A self-described "nerd," Ryan says he "loves to discover new technologies, new products and, you know, play with new apps, not to use them, but just out of curiosity." The response was big. Product Hunt now is a place where users can discover the latest mobile apps, websites and technology products made by everyone from indie coders to giant companies.
Ryan sees product launches as similar to startups. At Weekend Fund, he and his co-founder, Vedika Jain, invest broadly with a focus on business-to-business (B2B) and consumer-focused companies. He says they view their investments through two different lenses: "companies that are capitalizing on a consumer behavior shift..." and technology shifts, new tech that's allowing founders to build something that was previously impossible to do.
They're keeping the fund small at $10 million and invest $100,000 to $200,000 per company. They prefer to partner in rounds, as opposed to leading them.
Weekend Fund has some luminary LPs including Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon and... me. ;)
Hear Ryan reveal specific priorities for a successful product launch, fascinating and detailed insight into building community and how he decides what companies to invest in. Plus, he shares his take on emerging trends.
Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt and investor at The Weekend Fund.
dot.LA Sr. Podcast Producer & Editor Laurel Moglen contributed to this post.Want to hear more of L.A. Venture? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
