How to Launch on Hacker News (Show HN)

Hacker News is uniquely valuable for technical founders: the audience is smart, critical, and often willing to become early users if you earn their respect. A successful Show HN can drive thousands of signups and generate invaluable technical feedback. A failed one teaches you something too — usually about how you're describing your product.

1. What "Show HN" actually means

Show HN is for things you've built that people can try. The rules are specific: it must be something users can interact with (not a blog post, not a landing page with a waitlist, not a fundraising announcement). Link directly to your product. The title must start with "Show HN:" — this is non-negotiable and enforced by moderators.

2. The HN title formula

HN titles should be literal and descriptive. No marketing language. Examples that work:

• "Show HN: SQLite-vec — a vector search extension for SQLite"
• "Show HN: I built a CLI tool that generates TypeScript types from your database"
• "Show HN: A 1MB Docker image that proxies your dev environment to a public URL"

The pattern: "Show HN: [What it is] — [what it does in one line]." If you add marketing adjectives, HN will notice and you'll lose credibility.

3. The first comment is your defense

Immediately after posting, write the first comment yourself. Use it to: explain why you built this, describe the technical decisions you made, acknowledge what's rough or unfinished, and invite specific feedback. This pre-empts the "why would anyone use this" questions and sets a constructive tone.

4. What makes HN upvote

HN users upvote for intellectual curiosity and technical merit, not "this seems useful." To engage them: solve a genuinely hard technical problem, take an unconventional approach to a known problem, or build something developers have wanted for years. Pure SaaS products without technical novelty face an uphill battle — frame them around an interesting constraint or design decision.

5. What gets you flagged

• Voting rings or asking friends to upvote (HN detects and penalizes this aggressively)
• Posting a landing page instead of a working product
• Responding defensively to criticism
• Not engaging with technical questions in the comments

6. Timing and second chances

HN front-page slots are competitive. Post between 7-10 AM Eastern on weekdays. If your Show HN doesn't gain traction, you can resubmit after a significant update (not just a re-post). The community respects iteration — "I posted this 3 months ago and you gave me feedback, here's what I changed" is a strong second-chance narrative.