A big challenge super early companies/products have is getting eyeballs on the product. PH can get you thousands of users with little to no effort. So it's not about your product living or dying from PH, but it can take startups months to get that kind of feedback from users using the product. It won't determine success, but can certainly put you on that path.
We ended up being featured on PH's front page after one of these "insiders" found us on twitter, and posted us. Had no affiliation to us. Got hundreds of upvotes, and thousands of users to try our product out. Over time we lost all our PH users, but the feedback from them was awesome, and is likely what has kept us around 6 months later.
So not the sole reason, but definitely a significant one.
We ended up being featured on PH's front page after one of these "insiders" found us on twitter, and posted us. Had no affiliation to us. Got hundreds of upvotes, and thousands of users to try our product out. Over time we lost all our PH users, but the feedback from them was awesome, and is likely what has kept us around 6 months later.
So not the sole reason, but definitely a significant one.