Two of the most popular places to launch a side project publish their rules in plain language. Almost nobody reads them before launch day, and both rule sets are short enough to read over a coffee.
I read them again this week. The interesting part is not any single rule. It is that the two platforms, built for different audiences, land on the same handful of constraints, and those constraints tell you exactly how to spend the four weeks before you launch.
What the Show HN page says
Show HN's own guidelines open with the test: "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with." Then they list what does not qualify, in the page's words: "blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out."
Three more lines matter for anyone planning a launch:
- "Please make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails."
- "Don't post landing pages or fundraisers."
- "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN."
So the unit of a Show HN launch is a working thing a stranger can use in under a minute, with no gate in front of it. A waitlist page fails the first test before anyone reads your title.
What the Product Hunt page says
Product Hunt's launch guide is stricter about who you are and softer about when. The page states that "Company accounts are prohibited", so a launch runs from a personal account. It says launching is "100% free to use", that you can launch "as often as you have new significant product iterations", and that there is "no discernible advantage to using a third-party hunter", so you can self-hunt.
On timing, the guidance is that "12:01 am Pacific Time is the best time to launch for makers that are planning ahead", followed straight away by "The best day to launch is the day on which you're most prepared."
On help from friends, it is direct: don't ask directly for upvotes. The page tells makers to ask people to "visit and comment" instead.
The pattern under both rule sets
Put the two side by side and the shared logic is easy to see.
- Both ban the shortcut. Neither wants a launch that is mostly an audience pressed into voting. The rules are written against manufactured momentum.
- Both reward a thing that can be used. HN wants something people can try. Product Hunt's own wording about significant iterations points the same way: a real change, not a re-announcement.
- Both leave a legitimate door open. HN welcomes curious questions and specific feedback. Product Hunt says to invite visits and comments. What is left after the shortcuts are removed is real attention from real people.
That is the useful reading. The rules do not say "do not get help". They say the help has to look like what it is: someone looked at your product and told you something true about it.
What to do with the four weeks before launch
If the rules push everything toward real use and real comments, then the work before launch day is collecting the people who will give you both, and it has to happen before the clock starts, because the launch day itself is too late to recruit.
Week 4: get the thing usable with no gate. Remove the signup wall from the first experience. If a stranger cannot get a result in a minute, HN is closed to you and Product Hunt visitors will bounce.
Week 3: get five strangers to use it and write down what they say. Not friends who will be kind. Their sentences become your first comments, your launch copy, and your list of what to fix.
Week 2: fix what they hit, then ask for specific feedback, not votes. "Tell me where this confused you" is a request you can make in public. "Please upvote" is the request both platforms wrote a rule about.
Week 1: line up people who will visit and comment honestly on the day. This is the step most solo builders skip, and it is the only one that cannot be done alone.
The bit that is hard to do alone
That last step is where a solo founder runs out of road. You have no team to send a message to. Your friends are precisely the group the rules warn you off. So the supply of honest early comments comes from people who are also launching and who know what a useful comment looks like.
That is the reason I built Favors.dev. Founders help each other's launches with a testimonial, a share, or real feedback, earn verified points for the work, and spend those points to bring people to their own launch. Points are earned by doing the work, not bought, and the work is verified before points release. If you point the help at feedback and comments rather than votes, it sits inside what both rule pages describe. Read the rules of whichever platform you launch on and ask for the kind of help they permit.
Before you launch anywhere
- Read the rules page of the exact platform, the week before, not the night before.
- Make the first minute of use gate-free.
- Get five honest strangers on the thing while there is still time to fix what they find.
- Ask for visits, comments and specific feedback. Never for votes.
- Collect the people who will show up on launch day before launch day.
If you have launched on either platform, tell me which rule surprised you most. And if you want a place to swap ideas with other builders, come and say hello in the Vibe Coding is Life community on Skool.
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