How we won Product Hunt “Video of the Year” and 2.3k upvotes as a total newcomer

Hey!

We love reading tips from start-ups that have succeeded in doing something well, so we figured we’d share some of our own insights.

We’ve released a new video for today’s product launch, which is the perfect time to reflect on how we won Product Video of the Year as a totally under-the-radar start-up on Product Hunt last year. It’s a cool story, and also an amazing achievement for us to have experienced so early on in our journey.

First of all, here is our newest launch video. If it somehow made you laugh, intrigued, or just gave you a good moment, we’d be thrilled about your support ⚡️

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tl-dv-for-zoom

When we were starting out, we had to knock on everyone’s doors (figuratively - we’re talking Linkedin inboxes and the like). Basically, we were asking everyone to give our product a try. Raising awareness around our product definitely seemed like the biggest challenge at times. It was time-consuming, and outreach often had underwhelming levels of success.

tl;dv was a tiny team shooting in the dark. Fast forward a little bit, and we’ve won Video of the Year on Product Hunt - gaining 100,000s of views and new users in the process. Fast forward not long after that, and we’ve raised several millions of euros in capital.

SO HOW DID WE DO IT?

One thing was immediately obvious. We had to be different. To get noticed on Product Hunt (a platform that launches thousands of new products every year) you REALLY have to stand out. Being memorable is essential. So considering we’re a video-based product, we felt it made sense to do something creative with video. But we had a problem: budget. We were extremely limited by how much money we could spend. Hiring an agency to produce a flashy video was simply out of the question.

IN SEARCH OF INSPIRATION

We turned to TikTok for inspiration. Our target audience is Gen Z and Millennial professionals, so TikTok made sense as a platform to get marketing inspiration from. By chance, we discovered a hilarious creator through the video below (it still makes us laugh, honestly).

https://www.tiktok.com/@tomasbudin/video/6896875138545962241

The more of Tom’s content we watched, the more we felt like he really captured something we wanted to embody as a brand: effortless, silly comedy - and tons of pop culture references (Tom is frequently editing himself into movies with a green screen).

In recent years, with social media ‘stories’ and TikTok, it feels like video content is claiming the space that used to be dominated by picture-based memes. So a comedy video seemed like the right direction for us. We also knew that this format might resonate well with the Product Hunt community. Needless to say, we reached out to Tom.

BUT…HE’S SO POPULAR?

Tom had a huge following on TikTok, so we decided to target him on Twitter instead, where he had fewer followers and seemed more approachable. This is something worth emphasizing: CHANNEL MATTERS. We were super personal in our message to him, and really took the time to show how we were genuine fans of his craft and content. It was important that he wouldn’t mistake our message for some boilerplate that we were mass-sending to 50+ content creators. He replied immediately.

PLOT TWIST

But…he said he wasn’t interested. It didn’t matter - we were so persistent that eventually, he agreed. So that's the next point worth emphasizing: STAY ON IT! As a brand new start-up, you really can’t be afraid to ask (or too proud to beg!).

We agreed on a budget that was worthwhile for Tomas as a creator, but still affordable for us as a start-up. A lot of people who watched our launch video assumed an agency was involved, but nope - an agency would have cost us about ten times as much. Founders, you can honestly achieve so much more than you think on the budget you have. It’s the cringiest saying out there, but honestly: THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.

THE BRAINSTORMING

As soon as Tom agreed, we started brainstorming concepts. Our brief was pretty simple. Since our mission at tl;dv is to reduce meeting inefficiency and enable async+remote collaboration, we really wanted the video to express how much ‘deep work’ is disturbed by too many meetings. ‘Focus time interrupted by meeting’ was basically the theme, and Tom took on the ideation from there.

He suggested a famous scene from ‘The Shining’, in which Jack Nicholson gets interrupted by his wife while he’s working, and totally overreacts. Do you think it’s easy to green screen yourself into a movie scene? Let us tell you…it’s not. The script iterations and editing took forever to get right. There’s so many pre-requirements for the editing to work. For example, the movie scene in question can’t have any camera movement.

OUR CREATIVE PRINCIPLES

We decided on two creative principles for the video:

It’s more important to tell a story and entertain our viewers than promote our product. After all, we’re marketing to a generation of people who are constantly bombarded by ads and commercials. We had to believe that if we could be truly funny, then the product would sell itself. Surely a video that made our audience laugh would raise interest in our product more than if we went super hard on the promotional aspect? (Spoiler: we were right)

We also wanted to include an Easter Egg that would be appropriate for the platform’s audience. Since the Product Hunt logo is a cat (and everyone in the start-up community associates cats with Product Hunt) we put a little cat in the video. Tailoring the video to the channel was definitely a smart move - several people noticed and appreciated the Easter Egg.

LAUNCH DAY

We launched…and it was INSANE! On every platform where we posted the video, we got 100,000s of views. Needless to say, we immediately saw a spike in users, investment interest, and overall recognition. It’s one year later, and at least once a week someone still contacts me about our launch video and asks when we’ll do another one. Well…that’s the thing.

We’re dropping our 2nd launch video today, premiering on Product Hunt TODAY :D

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tl-dv-for-zoom

tl;dv is now not only available for Google Meet, but also for Zoom. This may never have been possible without the recognition we gained thanks to our collaboration with Tom, so you can imagine how happy we are that he’s also the creative brains behind our second launch video. We hope you’ll check it out and let us know what you think, and that you found our story motivating :)

tl;dr:

It’s worth being different

Channel matters

Be persistent

Entertain first, sell second