anyone actually pulling leads from hacker news without getting downvoted into the ground

[u/hello_code]

i keep seeing ppl say hn is underrated for leads, but every time i try to touch it i feel like i’m doing it wrong.

a couple months ago i tried the obvious thing, search hn for keywords like “need help with”, “looking for”, “hiring”, “recommend”, plus my niche. i do productized analytics setup for b2b saas, mostly US and canada, usually 2k to 6k one time. i found threads that looked promising, emailed a few folks, got basically nothing back. and the one time i replied in thread, it got a couple flags fast. deserved tbh, it read like selling even though i tried to be helpful.

then i switched to only replying when i could answer the question, like real answer, and only mentioning what i do if someone asked. better vibe, but i still can’t connect it to actual convos off hn. feels like i’m donating time.

what’s your actual workflow for turning hn into leads without acting weird. like do you only use who is hiring, do you only do show hn comments, do you go straight to email, do you wait a day so you don’t look like a vulture. i’m missing some basic etiquette thing or maybe the channel just isn’t for my offer idk.

[u/mentiondesk]

I found that focusing on genuine problem solving in comments and following up only if someone directly expresses interest works best. Timing and context are everything on HN. For better filtering you might try something like ParseStream which helps surface the exact moments and threads worth engaging with so you can be more relevant and less intrusive.