How Sequoia generated 7000+ views in App store by launching on Product Hunt

A quick intro about Sequoia

Sequoia is a men sexual health app that lets you track, control, and improve your intimate health while remaining completely anonymous.

Denis launched Sequoia on 22nd of March on Product Hunt and here is their launch performance:

1. Upvotes: 911
2. Comments: 777
3. Day rank: 2
4. Week rank: 2

Let’s unlock all their launch strategies and secrets

Maker Interview

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you started building Sequoia health?

Back when I was serving my country in military service, one day I started experiencing pelvic pain.However I was too embarrassed to visit the doctor and hoped that the pain would resolve by itself. But I was wrong and my situation just got worse.

That’s when I started doing research and found that over 800 million men in the world suffer from some sexual dysfunction or urination related problem. And the taboo around these situations were stopping men from visiting doctors. That was the reason we started sequoia health.

What were your goals for the launch?

Frankly speaking, it was like an experiment for us. First of all, we wanted to test our idea, to find men in the current target audience really needed our product and get market validation. 

At what phase did you decide to launch on PH?

We had our complete app ready before we launched. 

Because we didn’t know about Product Hunt before that. One of our friends in the PR circle said “I strongly recommend you to test your app on the Product Hunt” and that’s how we decided to launch.

How long did you take to plan the launch?

Two months. Yeah, It’s quite long but we did it in parallel with our general activities. This was our plan:

1. Since we were new to Product Hunt, we started learning about Product Hunt. We learnt what is k-points, discussions and we read a lot of articles on Launchpedia.
2. We reached out to makers in our circle who have launched on Product Hunt and asked about their experience and launch tips.
3. Then, we started working on the assets like website, images, demo video, copy, and description.
4. Then I started joined communities on Facebook, Whatsapp, telegram and slack. I started engaging, and tried to be active in these communities.
5. I started promoting our app and launch on facebook, linkedin and other social media platforms.
6. We ran a giveaway on social media where people who support our launch will get 15 minutes consultation from us for free. This helped us get good support in the launch day and first hour of launch.
   
   

We noticed that you and your team reached out to other makers on LinkedIn and asked for support. How did you plan and how did it work for you?

When I started interacting on Product Hunt, I saw other makers reach out to me on LinkedIn and ask our support. I thought this is a good idea and why can’t we try it for our launch.

So we started reaching out to other makers on Linkedin asking our support but we made sure it wasn’t aggressive & didn’t insist them to support our launch.

How did you make the list on whom to reach out?

We looked for people who are active & have good k-points on Product Hunt. Then we got their social media profiles from their Product Hunt profile and reached out to them.

What was your action plan on the launch day? And how did you divide your team?

Our whole team came to my place and we worked together. We divided tasks between our members:

1. Our CTO was responsible for monitoring issues in the website and app. Since we expected to get a lot of traffic on the launch day, I didn’t want our website/app to break or have some issue.
2. Our medical officer was responsible to replying all the questions in our app on the launch day
3. I wrote to people in my friends circle, social media, and community informing that our launch is live and support our launch.
   
   

What are your main traffic sources for a Product Hunt launch?

1. Linkedin
2. DM’s & Communities
   
   

Why did you launch on Wednesday?

I didn’t want to launch on weekends as I don’t want my team to work on weekends. And we wanted to avoid competition, so we launched on Wednesday.

What are the tools you used to prepare for the launch?

1. Adobe after effects – for product videos and thumbnail
2. Product wars – To track upvotes on launch day
3. Figma – Images
4. Google docs – Content
   
   

Could you share some numbers from the launch?

1. 7000 App store views
2. 1,100 App store page views
3. 997 registrations
4. 26 paid registrations

In addition to these numbers, we got 3 investors after our product hunt launch and we got featured in a media newsletter too.

What are 3 advices you would give to creators who’s launching on a product hunt?

1. Take your Product Hunt launch easy like a game. If you take closer to your heart, you will be afraid for launching.
2. Do not use bots to get upvotes
3. Don’t spam people
4. Make your goal clear and be clear on what do you want from the launch. Is it about acquiring website visitors, app installs, or just getting feedback?
   
   

What are the biggest challenges you faced while launching on the product hunt?

The biggest challenge for us is understanding how Product Hunt works. We spent a lot of time in preparing for the launch.

Thanks a lot, Denis for sharing your Product Hunt strategies and secrets with us.

Checkout Sequoia for more details.