How I Hacked Product Hunt Live Chat

I’ve benefitted from this secret for quite some time, so I’m a little reluctant sharing it. However Product Hunt is based on community and in that spirit, I feel like it’s time to let you in on this secret.

For the uninitiated, Product Hunt Live Chat is an open forum where the best and brightest from venture capital, technology, entertainment, and media hang out for an hour to answer your most burning questions. This presents an opportunity to engage with people who you normally wouldn’t have access to. Given the caliber of guests and the open nature of the forum, there can be a lot of noise making it hard to break through.

However, I’ve found a way to get my question answered 99% of the times that I’ve asked!

This hack has let me ask Vine star/model/social media Jedi, Sunny Mabrey, why she thinks people follower her on social media.

I also got to ask long time Facebook Product Manager, Eddie O’Neil, about what it’s really like to work with Mark Zuckerberg.

I was able to ask prolific singer/songwriter/producer, Maejor, about his creative process.

I asked the CEO of Front, Mathilde Collin, about the chat bot chatter and how it’s affecting (or not affecting) her company.

And my personal favorite, I got to ask writer/speaker/no fucks giver and all around badass, Anand Giridharadas, about how to do more good in the world.

Ok, so how did I do it? What’s the secret? Here you go:

First go to the Product Hunt Live Chat page. You’ll see a list of upcoming guests, so just pick your poison. I’m going to pick this guy:

Click the “remind me” button and…what pops up? This curious button that lets you ASK A QUESTION NOW. Well only if you insist!

What’s cool is that Product Hunt (for now) lets you ask questions in advance of the Live Chat. So now all you have to do post your question!

What I’ve found is that MOST guests on PH Live Chat answer questions in chronological order. They don’t have the time or patience to sift through all the questions and only answer the ones they want. By posting your question ahead of time, you accomplish a couple things.

First, you can increase your odds that your question is at the top, thus increasing your odds that your question is answered. Second, you allow yourself more time to think through your question so you don’t waste everyone’s time asking something like, “what’s your fave emoji?”

So now that I’ve opened up the proverbial pandora’s box, I’d like to end this post with a few ground rules to guard against abuse.

First, please limit yourself to one question. No one likes a hoarder. This is an open forum and you should let as many people engage in the conversation as possible. That possibility is impossible if you’re hogging the mic. People aren’t subscribing to hear your questions, they’re subscribing to hear the guest.

Second, please ask thoughtful questions that could add value to more people than just yourself. Again this is a public forum and the goal is to help everyone collectively. Please don’t pitch your app or ask the guest what they look for in a mate. This isn’t TechCrunch Disrupt or last call at the club so don’t treat it like so. I know this sounds asinine, but I’ve seen both of these instances so I feel the need to bring it up.