First-time maker: 3 questions before our launch (expectations, anti-spam, audiences)

Hey PH!

I’m Roy, one of the makers of Surf—a research copilot for crypto folks. Super excited for our first launch.

I’ve read a ton of guides but would love real advice from makers:

1. Expectations / forecasting

Do you usually have a sense of how many participants will show up on launch day—or a rough range of upvotes/comments? Any rules of thumb you’ve used (e.g., “% of Teaser followers who visit,” comment to upvote ratios, or targets you set for the first 4 hours)?

2. Keeping support authentic (not flagged as spam)

We have ~1k DAU in a global community who love the product, but many are new to PH. What best practices helped your community participate without getting flagged? (We’re telling folks to set up PH accounts first and leave thoughtful comments on launch day—no vote-asking. Anything else to avoid, like VPNs, account history, or sudden single-burst traffic?)

3. Balancing PH-native reach vs. our own community

How do you split energy between introducing your product to the PH community and activating your existing users? What tactics actually moved the needle for PH-native discovery (e.g., forum discussions/AMAs) vs. external traffic? If you had to prioritize one, which and why?

Happy to share a post-mortem after our launch so future first-timers can learn from it. Thanks for any pointers.

Also dropping our coming soon page here, and if it isn’t cool here, mods please let me know and I’ll remove it.
www.producthunt.com/products/surf-9