Sharath
Kuruganty

Shoutout.so was a "Wall of Love" - a product that let companies collect and display social proof from their customers. Simple idea. High-signal market. Sharath built the MVP using no-code tools while working full-time, found his co-founder online, and grew it to $2,700 MRR and 150+ paying customers before selling to a UK-based product studio.

The numbers tell one part of the story: $30K ARR, a six-figure exit (estimates put it between $110K-$150K). But the mechanics behind it are the more interesting part. Sharath built a viral growth loop by embedding "Powered by Shoutout" branding directly into the product - every testimonial widget his customers deployed was also an ad. Knowable, Maven, and On Deck were among his earliest customers.

The exit happened in 2022. What Sharath took away from it had less to do with the money than the method: you can build a fundable, sellable product without engineering background, without funding, without quitting your day job. What you need is a clear insight, a fast MVP, and the willingness to tell the world what you're building before it's ready.

When Sharath joined Product Hunt's community and operations team, he did not just post links. He became the platform's most prolific hunter - the person who spotlights a new product and shepherds it through launch day. Over five years, he launched more than 140 products, earning the #1 hunter spot and a Product Hunt Maker Grant along the way.

What that number represents is not just volume. It means Sharath has had front-row access to 140+ founders on launch day - their anxieties, their playbooks, their distribution strategies. He absorbed it all. His approach to community building is built on this foundation: being genuinely useful to people before you ever need anything from them.

The Product Hunt work also refined his instincts for product-market fit. When you've watched 140 products launch - some soaring, some sinking - you develop a nose for what resonates and what doesn't. That pattern recognition feeds directly into his angel investing and his own product decisions at GuestLab.ai.

Sharath has hosted his own podcast for years - so GuestLab.ai is a product he needed before he built it. The research phase of podcasting is the part nobody talks about: mapping a guest's career, identifying the questions they haven't been asked, finding the thread that makes an episode different from the seven other interviews they did that month.

GuestLab.ai automates that. Feed it a guest's name, LinkedIn, or Twitter handle and it returns a structured research brief - bio, suggested questions, potential angles. For hosts releasing weekly episodes with high-profile guests, that is a meaningful chunk of their production time handed back to them.

The early adopter list is telling. These are people who run some of the most respected podcasts in the creator and startup ecosystem. When Lenny Rachitsky and Arvid Kahl are using your product, the market has already told you something important.

Sharath's angel investing is a direct extension of the community work - he was already surrounded by early-stage founders before he ever wrote a check. The transition was less a new chapter than an obvious next step: formalize the support he was already providing and get skin in the game.

He writes small checks at pre-seed, typically combined with operational help: growth strategy, go-to-market thinking, community building. For the kinds of founders he backs - independent, building in public, solving real problems - that combination of capital and community access is often more valuable than a larger check from someone who doesn't pick up the phone.

His investing thesis is not abstract. It's derived from watching 140+ Product Hunt launches and spending years inside startup communities. He knows what the early days look like when a product is going to stick. He's also seen enough to recognize the failure patterns.