The Product Hunt Launch That Tripled His List
The Story
In June 2020, Packy McCormick set a goal to reach 2,000 subscribers by June 15th. By early June, he was at around 1,750 and wasn’t going to make it organically. So he took matters into his own hands (Source 1).
On June 9, 2020, he launched Not Boring on Product Hunt. He said he spent a ton of time building a strategy: researching past launches, talking to people who had successfully done it before, and creating a separate landing page (Source 1).
The morning of the launch, he sent a newsletter to his existing subscribers explaining why he was doing it and gave them the link to support the launch. “Just another benefit of building in public” (Source 1).
Not Boring won 2nd Product of the Day and grew from around 1,200 subscribers to over 3,200 in a matter of days (Source 1). He had more than tripled his list through a single, well-prepared initiative.
Lesson for Creators
A Product Hunt launch for a newsletter is unconventional, but that’s what made it work. Packy treated it with the same rigor a startup founder would: research, preparation, a dedicated landing page, and mobilizing existing supporters on launch day. The build-in-public approach amplified it further because his audience was invested in seeing him hit his goals. Sometimes the best growth tactic is simply treating your creative project with the same seriousness as a product launch.
Related
- A Year Below One Thousand Subscribers — the slow growth period this launch helped break through
- The Product Hunt Win Disguised as a Gallery — Tom Orbach: same channel, but reframed as a “gallery” to bypass curation