What is a Show HN launch?
A Show HN post is a special kind of submission on Hacker News, the link and discussion site owned by Y Combinator, where you share something you built so others can try it and talk about it with you. The title starts with “Show HN:”, and the post goes to a dedicated Show HN list as well as competing for the main front page.
The crowd is mostly software engineers, founders and technical people. They will open your product, poke at it, read your code if it’s open source and tell you in plain words what they think. That makes Show HN one of the fastest ways to get sharp, specific criticism of a technical product, plus a burst of visitors if the post climbs.
When should you use it?
- Good fit: developer tools, open-source projects, APIs, command-line tools, browser extensions, technical web apps, hardware with a detailed write-up or video, and products with an interesting technical idea behind them.
- Works if the build is the story: a consumer app made by one person in an unusual way, or a tool with a clever approach to an old problem.
- Skip it for landing pages, waitlists, sign-up pages, newsletters, blog posts and fundraisers. The Show HN guidelines exclude all of these, because people can’t try them.
- Wait if the product isn’t ready for users. Early and rough is fine, as long as people can actually use it.
How do you do it, step by step?
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Check you qualify. Read the Show HN guidelines once, start to finish. The test: something you made, that you worked on personally, that people can run or hold, and ideally try without signing up or giving an email. If your app needs an account, add a demo mode or a public sandbox with sample data before posting.
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Write a plain title. Format: “Show HN: Name, what it does in plain words”. Say: “Show HN: Ledgerlight, a bank-statement parser that turns PDFs into CSV”. Drop adjectives like “amazing”, exclamation marks and “the best”. Keep it to one short line that fits on a phone screen.
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Write the first comment before you post. Put it in a Google Doc so you can paste it the moment the post is live. Cover 4 things in 150 to 300 words: what it is and who it’s for, why you built it (your own frustration, in one or two sentences), how it works under the hood (stack, approach, trade-offs), and what you want to know. Close with a real question like “I’m unsure whether to support bank-specific templates or go fully generic. Which would you trust more?”
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Make the first 30 seconds work. Hacker News readers click, look, and leave fast. The link should land on a page where they can try the product right away, with sample data loaded. Put pricing and a “how it works” section on the same page, because someone will ask.
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Post when you can stay online. There is no official best time. Pick a weekday when you can stay in the thread for 6 to 8 hours straight. Post from your own account, and if it’s brand new, spend a week commenting thoughtfully on other threads first so you know how the place works.
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Do NOT rally votes. The guidelines say it plainly: don’t ask friends to upvote or comment. The Hacker News FAQ adds that the team penalises or bans submissions and accounts that break this rule. Let the post find its own readers.
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Answer every comment like a colleague. Thank people for bug reports, then fix the small ones live and say so: “Good catch, fixed, refresh and it should parse that format now.” When someone is harsh, find the useful part and answer that. Never argue about tone. Write down every feature request and objection in a sheet as they come in.
What does a worked example look like?
Say Mira is a freelance developer who built Ledgerlight, a tool that converts bank-statement PDFs into clean CSV files for bookkeepers. It runs in the browser and processes files locally, so nothing gets uploaded. She has 30 users from a bookkeeping forum.
Before posting she adds a “try it with a sample statement” button so nobody has to upload their own data. Her title: “Show HN: Ledgerlight, bank-statement PDF to CSV that runs in your browser”. Her first comment explains that she did freelance bookkeeping and lost Sunday afternoons to retyping statements, that parsing uses layout detection instead of per-bank templates, and asks which banks fail.
The post gets 48 comments. Eleven people send PDFs that break the parser, which hands her a test set she could never have built alone. Three people ask about a command-line version and one asks about team pricing for an accounting firm. She ends the day with 900 visitors, 120 sign-ups and her next two weeks of work planned by the people who will use it.
Which free tools help?
| Tool | What you use it for | Free plan |
|---|---|---|
| Hacker News | Posting and the discussion thread | Free |
| Google Docs | Drafting the title options and first comment | Free with a Google account |
| Google Sheets | Logging every bug, request and objection from the thread | Free with a Google account |
| Google Analytics | Visits, sign-ups and which pages people open | Free |
| GitHub | Hosting the code if the project is open source | Free plan available |
What mistakes should you avoid?
- Posting a landing page. It gets flagged or ignored, and you lose a launch you can’t easily repeat. Post when there’s something to try.
- Marketing language in the title. Hacker News readers punish hype. A dull, accurate title beats a clever one every time.
- Forcing a sign-up. Every extra field before the product loses readers. The guidelines name this directly as a reason for less feedback.
- Getting defensive. A blunt comment answered calmly wins more respect from the thread than any feature.
- Posting and leaving. An empty author reply section tells readers nobody is home.
How do you know it worked?
The best signal is the thread itself: specific comments about how the product behaves, bug reports with details, and people describing how they’d use it at work. Our rule of thumb: 20 or more substantive comments and at least 3 people asking to stay in touch or try a paid version is a strong result for a first Show HN. Visitor numbers swing wildly with front-page time, so look at sign-ups and replies instead.
Go: technical people tried it, found it useful and told you what’s missing. No-go: the post got few clicks and the comments question why anyone needs this. That points to a demand problem, so run more problem interviews before your next launch.
What should you do next?
Email everyone who signed up within 48 hours and ask one question about their use case, then set up a customer feedback loop to keep the conversation going. If your product also suits a less technical crowd, plan a Product Hunt launch with the improvements the thread asked for. For a softer audience on Reddit, read the Reddit launch post method. If you’d like an AI co-founder to review your launch plan, try the startup game for women by Fe/male Switch.
FAQ
What is the difference between Show HN and a normal Hacker News post?
A Show HN is for something you made that people can try, and it appears on the Show HN list as well as competing for the front page. Articles, blog posts and sign-up pages go up as regular stories instead.
Can I do Show HN without open-sourcing my code?
Yes. Closed-source products are welcome as long as people can try them. Expect questions about privacy, data handling and pricing, and answer them openly in the thread.
What if my Show HN gets no attention?
Plenty of posts sink without comments, and timing plays a part. The Hacker News FAQ allows a small number of reposts for a story that hasn’t had real attention, so improve the title and the first 30 seconds of the product and try again on another day. Never delete and resubmit the same post.
Updated 26 October 2026 · Written by the Fe/male Switch team