![]() Great founders are humble and surround themselves with people who challenge their thinking. When Jon meets founders he pays attention to how often they let the people around them speak. Also, startups have more and more talent available to them as the cost of leaving an existing job has never been lower. This is a healthy thing, like a brush fire in a forest. The correction has a silver lining: lots of tech transformation comes out of a downturn. Jon worries that VCs are doing certain complex deals to protect their marks and that there will be a number of zombie portfolios coming out in the next few years. There will be many casualties on the road ahead. Entrepreneurs have accepted that we are not going back to 2021 valuations. The vast reach of Blackstone, as one of the biggest asset managers in the world, allows them to apply their huge base of operational infrastructure to “make the winning company, not just find the winning company.” Prior to joining Blackstone, Jon was Head of General Atlantic’s Global Financial Services and Healthcare sectors. Jon is the Global Head of Blackstone Growth (BXG) and Co-Head of Technology Investing at Blackstone. However, Product Hunt will be adding more interviews after launch, and Torenberg explained that the kind of authors who were willing to sign on for a weird startup site before it launched tended to be more tech-minded.Jon Korngold joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Of 45 scheduled upcoming author interviews, only 13 are women. Overall, the list of authors skew sort of tech bro-y: A poetry book by the founder of Genius, Tucker Max's former publicist, Robert Scoble, Tony Robbins, and pickup artist Neil Strauss. ![]() It sounds great, but the initial batch of authors don't seem like the the kind that will pull in new users, or introduce new ideas to the existing base. Maybe you don't know what Product Hunt is, but you know the author and want to talk to the author." We want to have three to four really awesome interviews that will drive traffic back to us. Torenberg believes that the AMAs will attract an author's existing fanbase to sign up, rather than just having the current Product Hunt community control the book section. For the book launch, people already approved to comment on the tech site will be able to comment on books, and they'll have a more relaxed approached to commenting privileges (ask and ye shall receive, o fans of Kevin Roose, yearning to ask him questions). Product Hunt for tech only allows 2% of its users to post and comment, which keeps the community more civil than say, Reddit. It brings the makers and audience together." "What Product Hunt does is really good discovery based on friends and products you trust. "Social recommendations work for me – I want to know what my friends are reading," Torenberg said. So how did we get here?Įrik Torenberg, one of the Product Hunt founding team members, saw that the community was already interested in books, and as an avid reader himself believed that should be the next new section for the site (Product Hunt also launched a video game section recently). But initially, at least, much of what its books section has embraced seems to reinforce old stereotypes about the tech community. And moreover, the thing that's great about Product Hunt is that it helps its readers find new and unexpected things. The challenge it faces is how Product Hunt's large community, which skews toward an interest in tech, will translate into literary taste-making. Today, Product Hunt rolled out a new books section, which will allow its community to discover new books, form a reading club, and host author AMAs. ![]()
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