What I learned trying to get active on Hacker News as a founder
I recently tried becoming active on Hacker News after mostly spending time on Indie Hackers and LinkedIn.
I made a few early submissions, commented on technical threads, and assumed consistency would be enough. What I didn’t fully appreciate was how much HN prioritizes trust over activity. Low karma plus early self-submissions quietly killed visibility, even when comments were thoughtful.
The biggest lesson for me was that HN isn’t about posting often, it’s about posting patiently. One calm, experience-based comment per day seems to matter more than any launch strategy.
I’m now treating HN as a long-term reputation channel rather than a traffic source.
Curious how other founders here approached HN. What worked for you, and what mistakes should newcomers avoid?
I had a similar takeaway. The best HN comments read like notes from someone who actually built or broke something. No hype, no conclusions, just tradeoffs. That’s a hard habit to unlearn coming from other platforms.
Exactly. The best comments feel like working notes from the trenches. Sharing tradeoffs instead of conclusions seems to resonate much more here.
This resonates a lot. HN definitely feels more like a slow-earned reputation system than a growth or distribution channel. I’ve noticed that comments grounded in real experience, even if brief, ttend to age better than frequent posting or launch-driven activity. Treating it as a place to learn, contribute, and build trust over time seems to align well with how the community is designed.
One mistake I see newcomers make is approaching HN with a “promotion-first” mindset rather than curiosity-first. Appreciate you sharing this perspective very useful for founders just getting started there.
Well put. Treating HN as a place to learn and contribute first, rather than promote, really does align better with how the community works. Glad this perspective was useful.
This matches my experience too. HN feels less like a growth channel and more like a long-term credibility play. The moment you treat it like distribution, it pushes back. Curious if anyone here has seen success treating HN purely as a learning loop first, then looping back later.
Exactly. Treating HN as a learning loop first completely changes the outcome. The feedback compounds quietly if you stay patient.
HN rewards slow-earned trust—show up with one genuinely useful, experience-based comment at a time, not “launch energy.”
That’s a great way to put it. One useful comment at the right time seems to matter more than weeks of activity.
This resonates. HN culture rewards signal over speed. I’ve noticed that one thoughtful comment grounded in real experience goes much further than frequent posting. Feels closer to peer review than social media
Well said. It really does behave like peer review. Experience beats frequency every time on HN.
HN reminds me a lot of internal systems. Trust builds slowly, and one bad signal early can affect everything downstream. It’s interesting how similar that is to access control and reputation systems we design at work.
Interesting comparison. The access-control analogy fits perfectly. Early signals seem to carry a lot of long-term weight.