the idea of a bot is intriguing, but right now I'm manually finding founders contact info, reaching out, getting them in the system, asking them Q+A's on producthunt.com, cc'ing other relevant players in the convo, and following up with them to see how PH influenced their traffic and how we can help (which, again, founders respond gratefully for all the free traffic)

If anyone has suggestions for ways to automate part of this, as it takes a long time, i'm open!

Ever try emailing founders instead? I wonder if you'd get a better and/or faster response.

Perhaps you could require your product submitters to insert the contact email for the products they are submitting. Then, you could auto email the founder as soon as their product is posted on Product Hunt.

it's a good idea - but we want to make it super easy for the product submitter to post.

for some reason, we find that people are more responsive on twitter.

I don't see what the big deal is. Some HN people like to complain a lot - don't let it get to you.