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First-time founders are easy to find and hard to impress. They fill accelerator Slack groups, r/startups and the Product Hunt comments themselves, and most of them have a deck they are nervous about. This playbook covers the two weeks before launch, launch day and the week after, with copy you can paste.

All guidesFor founders of an AI pitch deck reviewer for first-time founders

1. 14 days out: review 20 real decks by hand

Post in r/startups and r/Entrepreneur: "I'm building an AI pitch deck reviewer. I'll review your deck for free this week and send you a written teardown. Drop a link or DM me." Run each deck through your tool, fix what it gets wrong, and send the founder the output. These 20 founders become your first supporters and your source of honest feedback.

2. 10 days out: find founders where they already gather

Join the Indie Hackers community, the YC Startup School forum, On Deck and Antler community threads if you have access, and local founder Discords or Slack groups. Search X and LinkedIn for "first pitch deck" or "raising our pre-seed" and reply with one specific note on their deck, not a pitch. Keep a simple sheet of every person who replies, because you will message them on launch day.

3. 7 days out: prepare the listing

Tagline example: "Get investor-style feedback on your pitch deck in 2 minutes." Make the first gallery image a before and after slide, then show a sample teardown of a public deck, for example Airbnb's early deck, so people see the output without uploading anything. Record a 60 second Loom of a real upload. Offer a free first review with no signup wall, because first-time founders won't hand over a deck to a tool they can't try.

4. 3 days out: line up people, not upvotes

Message everyone from your sheet: "I'm launching the deck reviewer on Product Hunt Tuesday. If it helped you, would you leave a comment about what it caught in your deck? No pressure." Ask for comments, not upvotes. Product Hunt discounts coordinated voting, and real comments from founders who used it make your page more convincing.

5. Launch day: post at 12:01 AM Pacific and stay in the comments

Post your maker comment right away: "I watched first-time founders get rejected for fixable deck problems: no clear ask, market size with no source, a team slide that buries the founder story. I built this to catch those before an investor does. Upload a deck and tell me where it's wrong." Reply to every comment within 30 minutes. Message your list in small batches through the day, and share in Indie Hackers and r/SideProject, where launch posts are allowed.

6. Launch day: run live reviews in public

Comment: "Post a link to your deck and I'll reply here with the top 3 fixes." Do these reviews yourself with the tool's output, publicly. Each reply shows the product working and gives the commenter a reason to come back and share it.

7. Days 1-7 after: turn visitors into paying users

Email every signup within 24 hours: "Saw you reviewed your deck. Which fix are you making first? If you're pitching soon, I can do a second pass after you revise." Test a paid plan for unlimited reviews and re-checks before a raise, and offer it to the people who uploaded more than once. Post a short write-up of the most common deck mistakes you saw on launch day in the same communities, with no hard sell.

8. Keep the outreach going daily

The launch gets attention for one day. Finding founders who are about to raise has to happen every day after that. Hulby, an AI cofounder, does this daily: it finds those founders, drafts the replies and tracks follow-ups.

Mistakes to skip

  • Asking friends for upvotes instead of asking real users for comments.
  • Requiring signup before someone can see a sample review.
  • Generic AI feedback like "strengthen your narrative" with no slide-specific fix.
  • Disappearing after launch day instead of following up with every user who uploaded a deck.

Want this done for your AI pitch deck reviewer for first-time founders, every day?

Hulby finds the people asking for what you built, writes every reply and email, and keeps you on it until they pay. Free to start.

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Questions

Which day should I launch?

Tuesday through Thursday get the most traffic but also the most competition. A weekend launch is quieter and easier to rank in if you have no audience.

Do I need a hunter?

No. You can hunt your own product. A known hunter helps little compared to having real users in your comments.

Will founders trust an AI with their deck?

Some won't. State plainly how you handle and delete files, and offer a sample review of a public deck so they can judge the output first.

What if I don't rank in the top 5?

Ranking matters less than the conversations. The signups, comments and follow-ups are what turn into paying customers.