Your tagline is the smallest piece of writing in your launch and the one most people will read. It sits at the top of your Product Hunt page, next to your name on directory listings, and in the preview when someone pastes your link into a chat. If a stranger cannot tell what your product does from that one line, the rest of your launch page never gets a chance. Here is how I would write one, grounded in what Product Hunt officially asks for and a few judgments I will label as exactly that.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters via Unsplash, free to use under the Unsplash License
Start with the constraint, not the creativity
Product Hunt caps taglines at 60 characters. That limit is the whole game. Sixty characters is roughly eight to ten words, so every word has to earn its slot. Before you write anything clever, write the boring version: what the product does, for whom. "A launch board for new startups." Boring is the baseline. You can improve on boring, but you cannot improve on vague.
The description field gives you 260 characters more, but treat the tagline as standalone. Most people will never read the second line.
Plain beats clever
Product Hunt's own launch guide tells makers to skip the marketing gloss and say what the product does so someone gets it on the first read. Their suggested bar is the Mom test: could you say it to your mom without her asking what it means.
This is where most taglines die. Founders compress three months of vision into one line and end up with something only they understand. "Reimagining async collaboration" tells a stranger nothing. "Shared to-do lists for remote teams" tells them everything. Clever has a place, but it is after clear, not instead of it.
A practical test worth doing: read your tagline to someone outside your industry and watch their face. If they nod, keep it. If they ask a follow-up question, the answer to that question is probably your real tagline.
Verb first, jargon never
The strongest pattern for a launch tagline is a verb plus an object: what does the user do with it. "Track your habits." "Sell your digital downloads." "List your launch where people find it." The verb forces you to describe the product from the user's side of the screen, which is the side the reader cares about.
Jargon fails twice: it confuses outsiders, and it dates fast. Words like "synergy" and "ecosystem" are the obvious offenders, but watch for insider shorthand too. If the word only makes sense to people who already know your category, cut it.
Photo by John Jennings via Unsplash, free to use under the Unsplash License
Write twenty, keep one
This part is advice, not official guidance: I would never commit to the first tagline that sounds good. Write twenty versions in one sitting. Most will be bad, and that is the point. Version four is usually the vision statement. Version twelve starts describing the product. Version seventeen is often the one you keep.
Look at the last five you wrote and ask which one a tired stranger would understand at midnight. That is your tagline.
One more judgment call: do not A/B test your tagline on launch day. Pick it the week before, put it everywhere (your site, your Product Hunt draft, your directory listings), and spend launch day on things that matter more. Consistency across surfaces is worth more than a marginally better line discovered mid-launch.
What to leave out
Three things I would cut on sight. Superlatives first: "the best", "the ultimate", "the number one" are claims a tagline cannot prove, and readers discount the whole line because of them. Feature lists second: "Notes, tasks, and calendar in one app" describes your roadmap, not the benefit, and it reads like every other tool in the category. Puns third: a joke that needs context fails exactly where the tagline matters most, which is in front of strangers with no context.
A good check for all three: imagine your tagline on a list next to ten competitors, which is precisely how it appears on launch platforms and directories. If it could belong to any of them, it is not yours yet.
Where the tagline actually works
A tagline is not just for the launch platforms. It goes on your landing page header, your social bios, your email signature, and every directory listing you submit. I run StartupWiki's launch board, a free place to list a launch, and listings there carry a name and a short description, so the line you write now is the line that represents you there too. Write it once, write it plainly, and reuse it everywhere.
Recap
Stay under 60 characters. Say what the product does before you say anything clever. Use a verb. Cut every word a stranger would not know. Write twenty versions and keep the one that survives a tired reader.
The tagline is one line, but it is the line your whole launch leans on. Give it an hour before launch week, not ten minutes during it.
I write about startups and launching every week on my Substack.
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