# Launch on Hacker News (Show HN)

> Post a working thing with a plain title, tell the story in your first comment, be present for six hours, and accept that the front page is a lottery you can only buy tickets for.

- **Section:** Launch & marketing · **Region:** Global · **Difficulty:** medium
- **Time:** 1 day of preparation · 6–8 hours of presence on the day
- **Cost:** $0
- **You end up with:** A Show HN thread with real feedback, and if it front-pages, a day of traffic from the most demanding audience online
- **Last reviewed:** 2026-09-05 · **Canonical:** https://for.do/p/show-hn-launch/

## Before you start

- Something people can try without signing up — a demo, a repo, a downloadable, or a free tier that works
- An HN account with some history; brand-new accounts posting a Show HN look like marketing

Show HN is the opposite of Product Hunt: no runway, no supporters to queue, no images, and an audience that will read your source, find the bug, and tell you. It rewards exactly one thing — a working, interesting thing described plainly — and punishes everything that looks like marketing.

## 1. Make sure it qualifies

- [ ] Read the Show HN rules page: it must be something people can try, made by you.
- [ ] Remove the sign-up wall from the demo, or add a "try without an account" path.
- [ ] Put a clear "what it is" paragraph at the top of the landing page; HN readers arrive cold.

## 2. Write the title

- [ ] Format: "Show HN: Name – what it is in plain words" (an en dash or a comma, no colon after the name).
- [ ] No superlatives, no "AI-powered", no "revolutionary". State the mechanism if it is interesting ("a Postgres extension that…").
- [ ] Under 80 characters.

## 3. Write the first comment before you post

- [ ] Why you built it (the problem you had), how it works (the interesting technical part), what is rough, what you want feedback on.
- [ ] Mention the pricing model honestly if there is one; hidden monetisation gets found.
- [ ] Have it ready in a text file; post it within a minute of the submission.

## 4. Post and stay

- [ ] Submit on a weekday morning, US Eastern time, from your normal account.
- [ ] Post the first comment immediately.
- [ ] For the next six hours, reply to everything: thank the bug reports, answer the technical questions in detail, concede the fair criticism.
- [ ] Do not ask anyone to upvote. Share the link with people who would be interested, and stop there.

## 5. Capture the day

- [ ] Watch the server; HN front-page traffic can be 10–50k visits in a day. Static pages survive, unoptimised apps do not.
- [ ] Log every bug and feature request from the thread; the comments are the best QA you will get for free.
- [ ] If it did not take off, wait a week or more before a resubmission, with a better title and the improvements made.

## Where people get this wrong

- Marketing language in the title. 'Show HN: X, an AI-powered revolutionary platform' gets flagged; 'Show HN: X, a Y that does Z' gets read.
- Asking friends to upvote. Voting rings are detected and the post is penalised; HN's own guidance says share the link, never ask for votes.
- Posting at midnight your time and going to bed. Your first comment and your replies in the first hours are the launch; a thread without the maker dies.
- Gating the demo behind sign-up. HN readers close the tab; the comments will say so.

## Questions

**When should I post?**  
Weekdays, roughly 7–10 am US Eastern, when US and European readers overlap. Weekends are quieter with less competition; either can work.

**Can I repost if it flops?**  
HN allows a resubmission after some time if the post got little attention; moderators also run a second-chance pool for good posts that missed. Do not repost the same day.

**What counts as a Show HN?**  
Something you made that people can try. Blog posts, landing pages with a waitlist, and 'coming soon' do not qualify under the Show HN rules.

## Tools used

- [Hacker News (Show HN)](https://find.do/t/hacker-news/) — Show HN — post a working thing to the most demanding technical audience online.
- [Reddit](https://find.do/t/reddit/) — Niche communities with strict self-promotion rules.

## Sources

- [Hacker News — Show HN rules and guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
- [Hacker News — Guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)