Creating a platform and a community to help launch 250,000+ products. That's what Ryan Hoover has accomplished with Product Hunt. Now he is investing in early-stage startups from all around the world with Weekend Fund, a VC fund he cofounded with Vedika Jain.
Tune in to this new episode to learn more about Ryan's entrepreneurial journey, his learnings and tips to succeed, his willingness to help and support other founders, and his expectations about investments.
Product Hunt is the place to curate new products every day. Product enthusiasts can share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations. Among 250,000+ products launched on the platform since 2013, we find great successes like Notion, Houseparty, Robinhood, or Front. Product Hunt was acquired by AngelList in 2016 (Ryan talks about it here).
Weekend Fund is the VC fund he created in 2017, to back early-stage founders from all around the world. Together with Vedika and a team of 2 analysts, they write checks from $100k to $300k, and offer an LP collective of 350+ exceptional founders and operators. They already invested in Intercom, Deel, and just raised their 3rd fund of $21M.
Topics
01:00 — Introduction and Proust survey
06:00 — The work-life balance
08:00 — The beginning of his entrepreneurial journey
10:00 — His vision of entrepreneurship: a creator or a manager?
17:00 — Scaling pace of PH before selling to Angelist
20:00 — Products that launched on his platform (Meerkat, Notion)
23:00 — Did u think of monetizing your database?
25:00 — The selling to AngelList
28:30 — The impostor syndrome
31:30 — Creation of Weekend Fund
38:00 — Convincing Limited Partners: a sales job
40:00 — Sourcing opportunities from Product Hunt?
42:00 — His thoughts on Angel investing in the next few years
46:00 — Outro (Definition of entrepreneurship? His biggest failure? One sector to be more digitized? Unpopular opinion about tech or entrepreneurship? Most underrated advice?)
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This episode is hosted by Yacine Sqalli.
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