How to Launch on Hacker News: A Show HN Guide for Founders
A practical Show HN playbook for founders. What the rules actually say, how to write the title and first comment, when to post, and how to turn one thread into lasting traffic.
Bhargab KalitaFounder of Xoru··9 min read
Most founders learn how to launch on Hacker News the hard way. They paste a landing page, write a title that sounds like an ad, and watch it sink off the new page in twenty minutes. I have done it. It stings. The good news is that Hacker News is one of the few launch channels where the rules are written down, short, and enforced in public. If you follow them and show up in the thread, you get honest feedback from thousands of technical readers for free.
Every post whose title starts with "Show HN" lands on the shownew page. Once it clears a small points threshold, it moves to the Show page in the top bar, and from there it can climb onto the front page like any other story.
The audience is mostly engineers, founders, and people who have seen a thousand launches. They reward substance and punish polish without it.
What counts as on topic?
The guidelines are specific, so it is worth reading them literally.
Allowed as Show HN
Not allowed as Show HN
Software people can run or use today
Landing pages and waitlists
Open source repos with a working build
Fundraisers
Hardware, shown with a video or detailed article
Blog posts, newsletters, lists, other reading material
Books, with a sample chapter
Sign-up pages with nothing to try
A major overhaul of an existing product
Minor version bumps like "Foo 1.3.1 is out"
Two more lines matter for SaaS founders. The project should be non-trivial, so no quickly generated one-offs. And it should be easy to try, ideally without signups or emails. If your product sits behind a login, give HN readers a demo account or a no-signup mode for launch day.
How do I prepare my product for a Show HN launch?
Prepare by removing every barrier between a curious reader and the core feature. HN readers give you very little patience before they leave or start a comment about your signup form.
Run through this checklist the day before:
Instant try path. A live demo, a guest mode, or a pre-filled example. If you must require an account, say so in the first comment and explain why.
A page that explains itself. One sentence on what it does, one screenshot or short video, and visible pricing if it is paid. Hide the price and someone will ask in the comments anyway.
Load you can survive. A front-page Show HN can send a sudden burst of traffic. Check rate limits, database caps, and API quotas.
Your own account. Post from a personal account with some history, not a fresh brand account. The guidelines require the project to be something you worked on personally and are around to discuss.
A clear block of hours. You need to be in the thread for the first several hours. Clear your calendar.
If the product is not ready for people to try, the guidelines are blunt: do not do a Show HN yet. Come back when it is. You can still share a write-up as a regular submission in the meantime.
How to write a Show HN title that gets clicks
A good Show HN title is plain, specific, and says what the thing does in under a line. Clever titles lose to clear ones on HN almost every time.
The format that works is simple: Show HN: Name, a [what it is] for [who or what problem]. Some examples of the shape:
Show HN: Pagecheck, an open source uptime monitor that runs on a single binary
Show HN: I built a CLI that turns Postgres slow-query logs into fix suggestions
No "revolutionary." No "the best." No exclamation marks. HN moderators often edit hype titles, and readers flag them. "I built" phrasing signals a person, not a marketing team.
What should the first comment on a Show HN say?
The first comment should explain who you are, why you built it, how it works, and what feedback you want. Post it within a minute of submitting so early readers see context before they judge.
A structure I use:
One or two lines on the problem you personally hit.
What you built and the one or two technical decisions that make it interesting.
What is rough, missing, or deliberately out of scope.
Pricing, stated plainly, if it is a paid product.
The specific feedback you want from this crowd.
Write it like you are talking to a peer at a meetup. Do not paste landing page copy. Being upfront about limitations earns more goodwill than any feature list.
Show up as a builder who wants to learn. People on HN, Reddit, and every other honest community can tell within a sentence whether you came to help or to collect clicks.
What is the best time to post on Hacker News?
The most common advice is to post on a weekday morning US time, roughly 7 to 10 AM Pacific, when the US East Coast is working and the West Coast is waking up. Tuesday through Thursday get recommended most often.
Treat that as a starting point. Peak hours bring more readers and more competition. A quieter window, like a weekend morning, has fewer readers but fewer posts fighting for the same slots on shownew. Neither is guaranteed. Stories on HN lose ranking weight as they age, so what matters most is whether real readers find it useful in the first hour or two.
What you should never do is ask friends, coworkers, or your Twitter followers to upvote or comment. The guidelines say outright that it is not ok, and HN has systems that detect voting rings. A post with suspicious early votes can be penalized or killed, and it can taint your account.
Running the thread: the first six hours
Your job on launch day is to be the most helpful person in your own thread. Reply to every substantive comment, especially the critical ones.
Tracking HN threads where people describe the problem your launch solves
A few habits that make a real difference:
Answer the hard question first. If the top comment says your product duplicates an existing tool, explain the difference without getting defensive. Readers watch how you handle it.
Say "good point, I will fix that" and mean it. Then ship a quick fix the same day and reply again. HN loves seeing a builder iterate in real time.
Do not argue about taste. Someone will hate your font. Thank them and move on.
Keep replies short. Long defensive essays read badly.
The comments themselves are the real prize. A Show HN thread is a free, brutally honest user interview with people who have tried your product. Copy the best objections into a doc. Half of your next roadmap is in there.
What if my Show HN gets no traction?
If your post dies on shownew, that is normal and you can try again later. Plenty of products found an audience on their second or third attempt.
The HN FAQ says a small number of reposts is fine if a story has not had significant attention recently. Use the gap well. Read any comments you did get, fix the onboarding friction, sharpen the title, and post again on a different day. HN moderators also run a second-chance pool that resurfaces some overlooked submissions, and they have publicly encouraged people to email hn@ycombinator.com about good posts that slipped through. One polite note is enough. Reposting the same day with a tweaked title looks like gaming, so do not.
How to turn a Hacker News launch into lasting users
A front-page Show HN gives you a traffic spike that fades within a day or two. The founders who get real value treat it as the start of a conversation, not the finish line.
Here is what to do in the week after:
Reply to late comments. Threads keep getting read for days, and late replies still get seen.
Follow the people who asked good questions. Many have public profiles or links. A short, genuine thank-you note works better than a pitch.
Write the post-mortem. A blog post on what you learned from the launch can become its own HN submission later, as a regular post rather than a Show HN.
Keep watching HN for your problem space. People will keep asking for tools like yours in Ask HN threads and in comments on competitor launches. Those threads are often better leads than the launch itself.
That last point is where most founders drop off. Launch day is one thread. The demand for your product shows up in hundreds of threads after it, across HN, Reddit, and X. If you only post and never listen, you miss most of it. I wrote more about this pattern in how to get your first users and in where to launch your startup.
Measuring which threads and replies actually turned into signups after launch day
Track which threads send signups, not just visits. A launch can send a lot of traffic and few customers, while a single helpful reply in an Ask HN thread three weeks later can send someone who pays. The guide to signup attribution covers how to see that difference.
Hacker News vs other launch channels
Hacker News rewards technical depth and honesty, which makes it different from Product Hunt or Reddit.
I built Xoru because launch day was never my problem. The weeks after were. Xoru watches Hacker News, Reddit, X, and LinkedIn for people describing the problem your product solves, then drafts a reply in your voice for you to edit and approve. Nothing posts without you. That keeps your account safe, and it means every reply you send is one you would stand behind in a Show HN thread.
Those helpful replies also build a public footprint that AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity read when they recommend products, which we cover on the generative engine optimization page. If you already use a free alert tool for HN mentions, the F5Bot comparison shows where it stops and where intent scoring and drafts help. Plans and limits are on the pricing page.
Prepare the demo. Write a plain title. Show up in the thread. Then keep listening long after your post leaves the front page.
Karma is not a vanity score. It is a gate. Some subreddits will not let you post without it. Here is how much you actually need and how to earn it without farming.
