Channel playbook
How to post a SaaS product on Hacker News (Show HN)
Hacker News rewards a working thing a stranger can try immediately and punishes anything that smells like marketing, which makes Show HN unusually good for technical products and unusually hostile to everything else. The prerequisite is a live demo with no signup wall — if the first thing a visitor meets is a login form, the thread will be about that instead of your product. Expect the comments to be blunt and treat them as the deliverable: it is the highest-quality free technical critique available anywhere.
The play for Hacker News
- Format
- Show HN with a live, no-signup demo link
- Cadence
- One launch moment
- Prerequisite
- A working demo a stranger can try in under a minute
This is the same play Beacon uses when it builds a channel plan — not a summary written for this page.
When this is the wrong channel
Hacker News is the wrong channel if your product cannot be tried without a demo call, if the audience is non-technical buyers, or if you are not prepared to have your architecture criticised in public under your real name.
How to start on Hacker News
In order. Each step is doable this week.
- 01
Remove the signup wall from the demo path
This is the prerequisite. A stranger has to reach the actual thing in under a minute with no account. Anything else and the top comment is about the wall, not the work.
- 02
Title it plainly: 'Show HN: <what it does>'
No adjectives, no tagline, no exclamation. "Show HN: Generate a demo video from a product URL" works; anything with "revolutionary" or "AI-powered" in it invites flagging.
- 03
Put the honest technical story in the first comment
What you built it with, what the hard part was, what it does badly, what it costs you to run. This audience reads that comment before it clicks, and specificity is the entire currency.
- 04
Post on a weekday morning US time and then stay put
Do not ask anyone to upvote — voting rings get detected and posts get penalised. Just be present in the thread for several hours.
- 05
Answer the harshest comment first, and concede where it is right
"You're right, that's a real limitation, here's why I shipped anyway" turns a critic into a defender more often than any rebuttal does. Getting defensive in a Hacker News thread is a public, permanent mistake.
What fails
The specific ways this channel goes wrong.
Marketing language in the title
The fastest way to get flagged. This audience reads promotional adjectives as a signal that the substance is missing.
A landing page instead of a demo
Show HN means show. If the link goes to a page describing the product rather than the product, the thread will say so.
Asking friends to upvote
Detected, and it penalises the post and the account. There is no version of this that works.
Expecting the traffic to convert
A front-page post sends a large, mostly non-buying technical audience. The value is the critique and the credibility, not the signups — planning revenue around it leads to the wrong conclusion.
What working looks like
A thread where the criticism is about the substance of the product rather than the framing of the post. That means it was read. The bug reports and edge cases in the comments are worth more than the traffic.
Time cost
One prepared post, then half a day in the thread.
Hacker News: common questions
What is the difference between Show HN and a normal Hacker News post?
Show HN is for something you made that people can try right now. It has its own section and a more forgiving audience for self-promotion, on the condition that there is a real working thing behind the link.
Why did my Show HN get no attention?
Usually timing, or a title that read as marketing, or a link that led to a landing page instead of the product. Reposting once after a genuine improvement is accepted; repeatedly reposting the same thing is not.
Should I worry about negative comments on Hacker News?
No — blunt comments are the norm, not a verdict, and a thread full of specific criticism means people engaged with the actual work. Answer the substance, concede real limitations, and do not argue about tone.
Which of these channels is right for your product?
Paste your product URL and get a ranked channel plan for your own customer segments — the play, the cadence and the prerequisite for each. No account, no card.
The other channels
Last updated 2026-08-03