The tech sector is luring workers from all over. “It’s the gold rush, isn’t it?” says Patsy Price, a software programmer who retrained as a coder aged 57 at one of the intensive coding schools now proliferating in San Francisco. It freaks me out that I don’t know what’s happening on the app when I’m sleeping Now, with funding, “It’s even more important that we keep it up.” Logically, he knows he shouldn’t worry but he likely still will. He wonders how he’ll react during the upcoming holidays, when traffic to the site will almost assuredly fall again. “See? Right now this stresses me out because we’re 10 per cent down from last week.” The site currently has more than 15,000 visitors on it. “I should probably not do this as much as I do,” he says. Hoover pulls out his iPhone and taps through to the app he uses to check traffic to the site. But with new investment comes new worries. To describe Product Hunt’s list of nearly 20 investors as a who’s who of the tech scene is an understatement. Incorporated this May, it raised its second round of funding, $6.1m, at a rumoured valuation of more than $20m. Product Hunt launched last year as an email newsletter that Hoover sent to friends. He’s a softly spoken 27-year-old with a mop of brown hair who built his first company of sorts aged 12, a website for hosting jokes that turned a profit of about $10. “There are people using Product Hunt when I’m sleeping, and it freaks me out that I don’t know what’s happening,” says Hoover. Every day, Hoover sends out an email of highlights at around 7.30am – 8am if he’s running late. Its website and iPhone app highlight other cool new gadgets and apps, which the small group of techies who post there are often the first to know about. His start-up, Product Hunt, has become a cult hit in Silicon Valley, with two rounds of venture capital raised in less than a year of the company’s existence. Weekdays at 5.30am or sometimes earlier, Ryan Hoover rolls out of bed in San Francisco and starts to worry.
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