Part 1 of 2: How to earn attention from Reddit, Hacker News and Product Hunt when you have no ad budget

TL;DR

In the AI era, ideas and even whole products get cloned in a weekend. Distribution is the part AI can't copy for you.

A launch is not a day. By the time you hit "publish," about 80% of the work should already be done.

One rule beats every tactic: give value before you take value.

On Reddit, Hacker News and Product Hunt, patience and reputation beat polish and hype. Fast, promotional launches get removed, banned or ignored.

You can build your first real audience for roughly zero dollars if you create something useful around your product before the product exists.

Your idea is not the moat. Distribution is.

Try this thought experiment. You have a good idea for an AI product. How long before someone else ships something nearly identical?

A year ago the honest answer was a few months. Today, with Claude Code, Cursor and a dozen other tools, it's closer to a long weekend.…