Blowing up on Product Hunt when you never meant to be on Product Hunt

Shannon Byrne’s A Song A Day project blew up on Product Hunt and she didn’t even put it there.

More of a passion project, she sends a song each day via email to each person on her list, curated just for them. She asks users for five pieces of information to help her and her team with curation.

As she puts it on her site’s front page: “Each song will come as a surprise, probably not at the same time every day. Because I am human, not a robot (yet).”

The Brooklynite and member of the New York Music Tech Meetup was slightly overwhelmed with the response from the site, and had to start putting new users on a wait list. We reached out to ask what a modest amount of virality feels like for someone running a decidedly non-automated process. Here’s what she had to say.

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How long were you on Product Hunt before you had to switch to wait list?

A couple of hours, 3-4 tops.

Why did you post the idea there?

I didn’t. I simply tweeted the project’s website the morning after I created it (with light hesitation), and it was posted within a couple of hours.

ruh roh. So I did this last night –> http://t.co/FWgjnFNhPf <– would eventually build a community of curators. 1-10: how nuts am I?

— Shannon Byrne (@ShannnonB) October 21, 2014

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How many new users was your cutoff before going to a wait list? How many are on the wait list?

Ah. I was up to 358 before cutting it off to the wait list. I’ve onboarded 138 more since, for a total of 496. We currently have 261 on the wait list. In hindsight, I should have cut it off after 100 or 200.

How much time each day are you spending on A Song A Day?

Tough question. I’ve been travelling the past two weeks for work, so it’s been especially difficult to work on it. But it’s usually my entire weekends — a solid 8-9 hours per Saturday and Sunday, and typically anywhere between 2-4 hours on weekday nights. Right now at least. I suspect that will become less over time.

What’s your strategy for opening up the wait list? Basically, are you looking at tech to do it or to more people?

My first step was to onboard curators — we currently have 16 including myself. I’m still trying to perfect that process while working with a developer on building a better email solution for now, and platform/product later. Hopefully in the near future. I also plan to onboard five more curators over the next couple of weeks, as this project is much more about the humans than it is the technology.

Any thought to rolling it out into a standalone startup?

Haha. Well, that would be amazing. I think the demand and potential is there, as well as the spirit and passion among the community. We will have to see what happens. I think it’s too soon to tell right now.