#PRODUCT HUNT FOUNDERS CLUB FULL#

The hardest thing about being a VC, he says: not investing in friends’ companies. With many young early-stage funds in the market-even some launched by Product Hunt alumni-Hoover believes early-stage investing will get more difficult in upcoming months, meaning that brand, reputation and a unique source of deal flow will prove key-something he believes he has, without causing a conflict of interest, through his work at Product Hunt. Hoover cites Codeverse, Coinmine, Girlboss, Passport, Superplastic and Voiceflow as examples of some of the “marked-up” investments so far, backed by firms such as Craft Ventures, Founders Fund, Initialized, True Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Of 40 investments made by Weekend Fund’s first fund, 18 have raised subsequent funding at a higher valuation one, Spectrum, has exited by sale to GitHub none have shut down. Whether the split focus is producing competitive results is hard to tell after just a few years of investing by the fund. But he really just does two full-time jobs,” says Jain, who signed on part-time herself seven months ago following stints at Mithril, Stripe and TrueLayer before transitioning to Weekend Fund’s first full-time role in the last two months. “From the outside, it looks like Ryan is running Weekend Fund on the side. Hoover says he’s gotten to know most of the founders entirely online. One-quarter of the portfolio is based outside the U.S. Hoover and Jain use dedicated Slack channels for each potential deal, Zapier-based automations and an in-development internal CRM tool to communicate between London and Los Angeles, where Hoover works remotely on all his projects.

#PRODUCT HUNT FOUNDERS CLUB FULL#

Product Hunt began as a side project originally, and he says he has no plans to leave his role at the company to work on Weekend Fund full time. Hoover knows that challenge from experience.

Product hunt founders club