At the time, when a user submits to PH it shows somewhere for all of their followers. So if they have a large following, it helps. Think it still works the same but not sure.

You need to get a certain critical mass of upvotes early in your submission to get "featured" (which shows your post to random people who browse to producthunt.com). Easiest way to do that is to get someone with a lot of followers (either on ProductHunt or Twitter) to post on your behalf.

I think that person’s followers get notified. I get notifications when friends of mine post on PH.