How to get your startup on Hacker News ?

Hacker News is a social news aggregator focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by Paul Graham’s investment fund and startup incubator, Y Combinator. Here you can submit anything which gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.

It has the world’s largest community of the Early Tech Adopters and the Entrepreneurs with a global Alexa’s rank of 2137. The community is frequently intensive, legitimate, qualified, and sometimes rude. It can help improve your startup by its valuable feedback and suggestion to a great extent.

The site was created by Paul Graham in February 2007. Initially, it was called Startup News or occasionally News.YC. On August 14, 2007, it became known by its current name. It developed as a project of his company Y Combinator, functioning as a real-world application of the Arc programming language which Graham co-developed.

Most interesting thing about this community is that they don’t get offended by the advertisement as they keep looking for the new product which can help them in any way. The hack here is same as you have to make your submission to the front page. The more upvotes and comments a submission has, the higher is its chance to come on top if they are on the featured page.

At the early stage of your startup it can help you with:

• Traction
• Good Testers or Early Adopters
• Some Technical Press
• And some Genuine Feedback

Just before the submitting on the Hacker News make sure that you have these things ready:

• Landing page
• Product with no bugs
• Catchy Tagline
• Short Product Description

Hacker News provides you with three sections to make a submission:

• Show HN: According to Hacker News, “Show HN is a way to share something that you’ve made on Hacker News. The current Show HNs can be found via show in the top bar, and the newest are here.

Show HN is for something you’ve made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread. A Show HN needn’t be complicated or look slick. HN users are comfortable with work that’s at an early stage.

If your work isn’t ready for people to try out yet, please don’t put “Show HN” in the title. Once it’s ready, come back and share it then.

To post one, simply submit a story whose title begins with “Show HN“.

• Ask HN: Ask HN is a way to ask something to the community of Hacker News. The current Ask HNs can be found via Ask in the top bar, and the newest are here.
  To post one, simply submit a story whose title begins with “Ask HN“.
• General: Any submission without Show HN and Ask HN keyword in the title goes to the general category. It goes into the new section of the hacker news.

Let’s dive more into this and know more about how to get the maximum from Hacker News.

• Time: Hacker News is most active at around 12 PM EST at with approximately 40 submissions per hour.
  First, let’s see when Hacker News has the most activity by observing the average number of submissions for each combination of submission hour and weekdays.

• If you are making your submission at 12 PM, you will face a huge competition, but it would be easier to get upvotes since there would be more people visiting the site.You can also estimate the best time by analyzing the times of submission of previous posts.

• Be Responsive: Welcome all the feedback and suggestions and respond to all the comments because they made an effort for you.

Here are some easy tips which can help you to get your startup on the Hacker News

» You only get one upvote per IP address. Asking everyone in the office to upvote your submission will not help you if you have submitted the link from the same IP.

» Sending a direct link of your submission to your friend for a upvote will not be counted.

» Don’t use words like “Review my startup” as Paul Graham the founder of the Hacker News noted here that “Review my startup” posts by brand new users will often be deleted as spam

Happy Hacking!