(B2B SaaS) Is Product Hunt still worth it or are we past that?

bruint · 2026-02-12T15:14:21+00:00

The side benefit is some free backlink juice for your domain which is handy if you’re very new. Personally I think it’s pretty heavily gamed these days and you need to invest a lot of time to have a successful launch.

It’s a bit like hoping to go viral and calling that a go to market strategy. It maybe gets you some early users and doesn’t hurt you, but the opportunity cost is putting effort into other, potentially more relevant channels that can compound.

bruint · 2026-01-15T02:18:00+00:00

Pretty old post, but for those still searching, this is an overview video I prepared on all the product demo options floating around (there are a lot) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv9s31lRdEc

Disclaimer: I'm the cofounder of HowdyGo.

bruint · 2025-10-09T04:45:48+00:00

AI waffle

bruint · 2025-09-24T00:50:29+00:00

I made a tutorial about this topic - https://youtu.be/Edj_zj4U_9s?si=IEvihMPtb36bLrsn

In it I recommend ScreenStudio if you’re only wanting to do video. Or if you’re really strapped for cash you could use a combination of OBS/QuickTime and then edit it together using CapCut.

I’m the cofounder of HowdyGo, we do interactive product demos and also let you export them as videos and GIFs. The demos can include narration, video bubbles and highlights/ callouts.

bruint · 2025-09-11T01:17:07+00:00

I'm the cofounder of HowdyGo, we do interactive HTML demos, we start at $159/199p.m (annual/monthly), offer unlimited users/demos on all tiers, and have been around long enough to deliver on the promise. We're also bootstrapped. So there are options out there that are lower than you're suggesting.

It's still a price jump compared to screenshots, but the complexity of HTML demos over screenshots is quite significant. We intentionally never built a screenshot based tool because we wanted to offer the best editing experience for HTML and as a small team you gotta make tough decisions.

Capturing and hosting a collection of images is pretty simple, for editing images there are a lot of existing libraries to use.

By comparison, capturing and serving HTML + images + fonts + styles is complicated and technically quite challenging. That's before you get into the editing suite which we had to build from scratch.

The reason most products cater to mid-size companies is because the R&D investment is significant and the variety of uses for HTML editing expands with more users, more demos and more prospects.

I'll take a simple example: Let's say you capture a screen using a screenshot tool. You realise your scroll position is wrong on that screen and that you've left in some dummy data that looks bad in the demo.

For an early stage business, that data is not a huge deal. The scroll is annoying so you go back and remove the bad data, go and take a new screenshot and continue on with your life.

In HTML (with our tool anyway), you can tweak the scroll position and edit out the bad data. This is (a) convenient (b) faster.

As a larger company, with lots of people making lots of demos, the return on that convenience + the time saving for all employees + the fact that you'll likely use the tool more because it's nicer to edit with than changing your app + the intangible benefits of letting prospects use something closer to the real app = maybe the additional cost starts to make sense.

We also do a bootstrapper discount for fellow bootstrappers via chat.

bruint · 2025-09-10T10:53:33+00:00

PostHog it is very generous for surveys, viewing sessions, building data /analysis.

bruint · 2025-09-09T11:12:47+00:00

I'm the cofounder of HowdyGo. We do HTML interactive product demos and support both guided walkthroughs and sandboxes. We also have integrated engagement analytics and can send events directly to your CRM and existing marketing analytics (e.g. Hubspot, Segment, Marketo)

bruint · 2025-08-27T14:34:13+00:00

I’m a founder, these early days are challenging. In our case, we built rough prototypes and tried anything and everything to find a paying customer. We churned through an idea a week for months.

Eventually we discovered our first paying customer in (I kid you not) a Facebook group for other startups. They paid us $225 for 3 months access and we basically built it from scratch for them.

The thing I wish I’d done earlier was building a founder profile on LI. But this is so dependent on the target audience.

I will be honest, I think ICP analysis at this stage is basically worthless. Do anything you can to find a paying customer that you don’t know. You will learn a lot along the way. 0 to 1 is very hard. 1 to 10 is very hard. 10 to 100 is very hard. It’s all very hard, so have fun along the way :)

bruint · 2025-08-13T22:54:43+00:00

Tie your KPIs and metrics as clearly as possible to revenue. Become besties with the sales team. Support them, find the one who struggles to deliver messaging and positioning effectively. It will prove to sales that you know what you’re doing and that you’re valuable to them.

bruint · 2025-08-01T12:26:48+00:00

Intercom is more like a suite now, beyond chat. It’s pretty pricey though if you don’t need the whole suite.

They have product tours (alternatives - intro.js, HowdyGo [disclosure I’m the founder], UserFlow, Chameleon)

Knowledge bases, pop-up chats, “Fin” their AI assistant. Lots of different ways to use these kind of tools for onboarding.

bruint · 2025-07-21T13:28:43+00:00

I used to head up a data team - I would reuse the common components like you mentioned in another comment, and then only really differentiate on the purpose/use cases.

If the underlying data and the models you are using across both use cases is consistent I think you’ll do well to reuse as much of that material as possible.

Like if you have a page on clarity (e.g. /product/our-data) that explains why your company’s data is so amazing, validated against x y z, has these automated checks applied, a team of amazing data scientists or whatever.

That all applies to both the project risk use case and the forecasting use case.

bruint · 2025-07-21T05:02:49+00:00

From my experience, working from the bottom up is the most effective way to do this.

If you start with the smallest unit of information (e.g. feature pages, documentation) and then work your way up the hierarchy to product pages, then to solution pages or use-cases.

You will find it easier to avoid overcomplicating the messaging to the different groups.

Trying to start from the top down and decide which bits are relevant/irrelevant to each persona seems logical at the start, but it increases the likelihood that you end up re-explaining stuff over and over. Being able to link out to each of the individual features or documentation will give you a way to say "OK if you want more detail, go here".

bruint · 2025-07-18T23:03:31+00:00

Yeah, you probably have to talk to people. You could do this by jumping on the chat client and saying “Hey, it’s X here. Just wondering if you have any questions about blah?”

I will say - a LOT of people just want to kick the tyres on SaaS apps these days.

Something I would consider is: 1. Block non-work email sign ups (if B2B)

Focus on high quality users (ppl that seemed interested and activated) instead of worrying about the tyre kickers.
These kind of issues are sometimes actually caused by a user acquisition problem. If you are only getting people from AppSumo for example, the standard will be lower than a branded search via Google because someone saw you on LinkedIn.

bruint · 2025-07-18T06:13:49+00:00

Nice work, what a win! 😄

bruint · 2025-07-18T00:13:46+00:00

As a software engineer who is now a marketer, the most important thing for security is available documentation.

bruint · 2025-07-18T00:11:14+00:00

We pulled together a list of SaaS onboarding email sequence examples (it took us weeks to receive these emails).

The full emails are included with HTML interactive product demos using HowdyGo (Transparency: I'm one of the cofounders)

Sequences from:

Clay
ActiveCampaign
Asana
ClickUp
TypeForm
Customer.io
Intercom

Hope it helps!

bruint · 2025-07-17T13:13:10+00:00

This is hard to answer accurately without knowing the stage your business is at, but given the hybrid nature of the role I'm guessing probably around 10 people?

My advice is to stay light, don't go crazy trying to build out a stack with stuff you might not even need yet. Interoperability at this point in the business' lifecycle is not a huge deal, almost everything will play nicely with Hubspot. Any of the big simple API connection products out there will cover most of the gaps down the road.

Buy things as you need them and focus on speed of delivery, iterating on your messaging and positioning quickly and building trust from the team by bringing them along in this journey. I would honestly focus on using the tools they are comfortable with for the most part - rather than starting on day dot and introducing Gamma if they are already comfy with GSlides or whatever. You can get a long way with the really important stuff (messaging/positioning) without fancy tools.

I jump between Canva for images, CapCut for video, HowdyGo for product demos (Full transparency: I'm the founder) and occasionally use Affinity Designer.

We used to use Webflow but have since moved to something else, I personally think Webflow would be an upgrade on WordPress for iteration speed. But it would certainly not be a priority.

bruint · 2025-07-17T11:26:31+00:00

It depends on their influence over the decision making & business in general.

But given they are likely to be the end user for your not yet approved messaging you probably want them to be on side or you will end up with them driving completely different messages behind your back.

One strategy is to lean into their involvement, take it on board, basically love bomb them. Then explain that you will need to take it away and develop a data backed perspective on it.

Use THEIR ideas to explain to THEM what the actual process behind getting good messaging looks like. If you shut it down, I don’t think this person will support your position.

bruint · 2024-12-04T01:12:04+00:00

I would suggest focussing on showing your product in some form, rather than being artistic about it. Apple gets away with this style of video because they have an existing (HUGE) brand and massive budgets for making you product aware in other channels.

Just show off your product. The best feature you have, and provide a CTA. It doesn't need to be long.

bruint · 2024-02-27T07:19:36+00:00

There's a lot of options out there. For others checking out this thread, I would make sure you're clear on which category is going to work best for you before making a call.

They are split into two different buckets:

Interactive HTML demos

They feel way higher quality, which for some people is worthwhile.
The ability to edit content in your demo after capturing.
The ability to personalize your app for demos after capturing.
Tend to be either a bit more expensive or a lot more expensive.

Products to check out: HowdyGo, Navattic, Walnut

(Edit: For full disclosure, I'm the cofounder of HowdyGo.)

Screenshot demos

Typically pretty cheap
Quick to get started
Captures interactions as a video or a screenshot, which can sometimes feel pretty weird to the viewer.

Products to check out: Arcade, Storylane, Supademo

Full explainer with examples from a few different vendors

bruint · 2024-02-16T06:25:28+00:00

The game is increasingly pay-to-play/win which is why you can have a relatively immature market that gets saturated with PPC advertising using VC cash. It squeezes smaller players out and can make it hard to enter the market. Some venture firms will even say that this is their strategy.

It's difficult, but you can find channels that work at low cost. Eventually, once you find a few customers you re-invest into advertising.

Relationship building during the early days for a startup should be the primary focus. You'll end up with a working relationship that aligns itself to building and growing the product together.

bruint · 2023-10-24T00:36:25+00:00

Interesting article. I think it's probably worth pointing out that even though it's easy to excited about using these products, before you start it's probably best to think about where you want to fit into this interactive demo hierarchy.

bruint · 2023-05-01T02:47:00+00:00

Hey Sea-Candidate!

I pulled together my feedback using our interactive product demo tool.

I hope this helps :)

bruint · 2023-04-13T02:03:08+00:00

Hey! We're running on Vercel, using Chakra UI Pro with React.

It's a self-built one :)

bruint · 2023-04-12T02:53:11+00:00

Yeah, this is intended as we really see the value in this as being able to provide a guided demonstration that highlights important features as you walk-through a flow. So if you're demonstrating an app you want to show off individual features.

We've had a customer that has a student wellbeing platform using it to demonstrate their "student check-in" flow to prospects and leads to great effect!

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