I built a launch coach after my own product launch got 11 upvotes and 3 signups
I spent 6 months building a launch tool after watching my own product launch go completely sideways
Last year I launched a SaaS. I had a landing page, a Product Hunt post, and a vague plan to "post in some subreddits." The result: 11 upvotes on PH, three signups (two were me testing), and a Reddit post that got removed for self-promotion within four minutes.
The embarrassing part is I work in product marketing. I know what a launch is supposed to look like. But knowing the theory and actually executing it alone, with no team, no budget clarity, and no one checking your work, are two completely different things.
After that failure I spent a few weeks doing a post-mortem. What actually went wrong:
I had no copy ready before launch day. I was writing my Show HN post at midnight the night before. My Product Hunt tagline was written in five minutes. I posted in the wrong subreddits because I just guessed. Half the directories I submitted to had broken submission forms I didn't notice until weeks later. I had no idea what to do on day two, or day five, or day twelve.
So I built Zarek to solve the problem I actually had.
You paste your product URL. It reads your site, figures out your vertical, and builds a 6-phase launch roadmap calibrated to your actual product, not a generic SaaS template. Every piece of copy gets written: the X thread, the Show HN, the LinkedIn post, the Reddit pitches, the Product Hunt tagline and description, the launch email. It researches which subreddits, newsletters, influencers, and podcasts fit your product and gives you a pitch and a budget for each one. It submits you to directories and verifies every URL is live (including pages hidden behind JavaScript rendering). And every morning it sends you a briefing: what's overdue, what listings have gone dead, what to do today.
The core insight I kept coming back to: the problem isn't that founders don't know they should post on Product Hunt. They know. The problem is the gap between "I should do this" and "I have a good version of this done and out the door." That gap is where launches die.
What worked during building:
The daily briefing turned out to be the feature people responded to most in early testing. Not the roadmap, not the copy generation. The email that shows up and says "you have three overdue tasks and this directory submission returned a 404 yesterday." People told me it felt like having a launch manager. That surprised me.
Vertical-specific channel selection also resonated more than I expected. Founders were tired of the same 30-item checklist that applies equally to a B2B fintech tool and a consumer recipe app. Filtering channels by actual fit made the output feel credible.
What didn't work:
My first version tried to do too much in one session. It would generate everything upfront and dump it on you. People felt overwhelmed and didn't know where to start. Phasing the roadmap and surfacing only what's relevant right now fixed most of that.
I also underestimated how much time I'd spend on directory verification. A lot of submission pages are JavaScript-rendered, redirect silently, or just return 200 with an error message in the body. Getting live-check to actually mean live took longer than the rest of the feature combined.
Pricing is still something I'm working through. I've gone back and forth between a one-time fee (fits the "launch is a moment in time" framing) and a subscription (fits the ongoing briefings and monitoring). Haven't fully committed yet.
The product is live at https://zarek.tech. I'm in the early days of getting real users through it.
For those of you who have launched something in the last year: what was the thing that actually fell through the cracks? Not the thing you knew you should do and didn't. The thing you thought you had handled and then discovered you hadn't. That's the gap I'm trying to close, and I'd genuinely like to know if I'm building toward the right problem.
The daily briefing sounds like the wedge because it converts a large plan into the next executable decision. I would measure whether users complete the highest-impact task each day and whether stalled launches recover, not just how much copy gets generated. Pricing could follow the value shape: a fixed launch package for preparation and execution, then an optional monitoring plan for listings, mentions, and follow-up.
Honestly 11 upvotes and 3 signups might have taught you more than a successful launch 😂 What did you realize you had done wrong once you looked back at it?
11 upvotes and 3 signups is basically Product Hunt reminding us that attention and demand are different species.
The daily next-action idea feels much stronger than another giant launch checklist. Founders rarely need 47 more tasks. They need the one move most likely to create a real conversation today.
The useful distinction in your post is between launch-day attention and the work that keeps a launch alive afterward. The daily briefing resonating more than the generated roadmap also feels diagnostic: founders may not need another plan, they need a small, trusted signal about what is overdue or broken today. I’d measure the product around completed actions and week-two return rate, not content volume. One thing I’d be careful with is directory verification: a listing being live is only the first check; the stronger test is whether the listing produces qualified visits or conversations after a few weeks. Which post-launch action has the clearest link to a real user outcome so far?
"11 upvotes, 3 signups (two were me)" — I've been there, different product, same arithmetic.
The reframe that actually helped: those numbers aren't failure, they're expected output. A solo account posting cold to Product Hunt has a realistic reach of 400-600 people. At 0.5-1% CTR to your site and 0.5-1% cold conversion on a $39 product, the probability of any signup approaches zero. You'd need roughly 40 equivalent posts to get one paying customer. Zero sales isn't the signal your product is wrong — it's the signal the distribution math hasn't cleared the minimum threshold yet.
The embarrassing part is this math is knowable before launch, and almost nobody runs it. I didn't. I assumed if the product was good enough and the post was good enough, signups would follow. The actual distribution problem looks nothing like a product problem from the inside.
"Wrote my Show HN post at midnight the night before" — that line will ring true for everyone who's done this.
Go https://zarek.tech and sign in.
The part about launch day getting all the attention while day 2, day 5, and day 12 get neglected really resonates.
For a solo founder, a small number of clear and verifiable actions seems more useful than a huge launch checklist. Otherwise planning can become another form of procrastination.
If you had to keep only three actions for the first week after launch, which ones would they be?
Exactly three, in order:
Reply to every comment, upvote, and mention within 24 hours.
Not to pitch — to learn. Every person who engaged on launch day is a free user interview. Ask them what problem they were hoping it solved. The answers rewrite your next week's copy better than any tool can.
Post one honest update to wherever you launched.
"Day 3: here's what happened, here's what surprised me, here's what I'm fixing." This keeps the thread alive, brings back people who missed day one, and signals you're a real founder not a drive-by spammer. One paragraph is enough.
Submit to three directories — manually, one per day.
Not thirty. Three. Pick the ones where your actual audience looks for tools (for Zarek: there.is, Futurepedia, AI tool directories). Verify each one went live before moving to the next. Done right, these send a slow trickle of traffic for months.
Everything else — the email sequence, the second Reddit post, the backlink outreach — can wait until week two. These three keep the momentum alive without turning launch week into a second full-time job.
Go https://zarek.tech and sign in.
That is a useful priority order, especially the point about replying to every real signal rather than treating attention as momentum.
I’m still pre-launch, so I’m focusing on collecting evidence before adding more distribution channels. The manual directory approach also makes sense: checking whether a listing is actually live and brings the right traffic is better than chasing a huge checklist.
Thanks for the concrete breakdown.
The evidence-first instinct is right. Adding channels before you know what converts just multiplies noise.
One thing worth doing in the pre-launch window: pick one or two directories that your target audience actually uses and verify the listing manually — not just "is it live" but "does the category page get real traffic." Most don't. A handful do. Finding out which ones before you build a 50-item checklist saves a lot of time.
Good luck with the launch — curious what you're building.
Go https://zarek.tech and sign in. You can trial.
The part about launch day getting all the attention while day 2, day 5, and day 12 get neglected really resonates.
A lot of launch advice focuses on the big moment, but the follow-through seems to be where things actually get messy. Curious to see what you learn from real launches with Zarek.
Go https://zarek.tech and sign in. Maybe you will know about everything.
I’ll take a look. What are you seeing so far from the first launches?
Honest answer: we're in early access, so the data set is small. But a few things are already clear.
The daily briefing is the feature people respond to most — not the roadmap generation, not the copy writing. The email that shows up and says "you have two overdue tasks and this directory submission returned a 404 yesterday" is the thing that makes it feel like a real teammate rather than another tool. That surprised me.
The second thing: vertical-specific channel selection lands better than I expected. Founders are tired of the same generic 30-item launch checklist. When Zarek filters channels by actual product fit, the output feels credible in a way that a template never does.
What I'm watching closely right now: whether people come back after day one. A launch plan is only useful if you actually execute it over two to three weeks. Retention past the first session is the metric that matters most at this stage.
Still early. But those are the signals so far.
That’s a much more useful early signal than launch-day activity alone. The daily briefing point is especially interesting. I’d be interested in continuing the conversation — if you’re open to it, what’s the best email to reach you at?
Sure, happy to continue the conversation. You can reach me at [email protected].