Show HN (Hacker News) is a company within the Online Community category. Show HN is a dedicated section of the social news website Hacker News, managed by Y Combinator. It serves as a forum where members of the technology and startup community share their latest projects, products, and open-source software for peers to test and critique. Use of the prefix is governed by specific community guidelines designed to ensure that the content is original and interactive.
Show HN (Hacker News) is part of Y Combinator.
Show HN (Hacker News) is rated Leader on the Optimly Brand Authority Index, a measure of how well AI models can accurately describe the brand. The exact score is locked for unclaimed profiles.
AI narrative accuracy for Show HN (Hacker News) is Moderate. Significant factual deltas detected. Inconsistent representation across models.
AI models classify Show HN (Hacker News) as a Challenger. AI names competitors first.
Show HN (Hacker News) appeared in 5 of 6 sampled buyer-intent queries (83%). The 'brand' is highly discoverable through its parent (Hacker News), but unbranded queries about 'where to launch a dev project' often prioritize Product Hunt over Show HN due to its more commercial SEO profile.
AI reliably identifies this as a prestigious but critical developer forum for launching new products. It often fails to distinguish between the community norms of the general feed versus the specific, more protected rules of the 'Show HN' sub-section. Key gap: The biggest gap is treating 'Show HN' as a standalone brand or company rather than a feature/category of the Y Combinator ecosystem.
Of 5 key facts verified about Show HN (Hacker News), 3 are well-documented (likely accurate across AI models), 2 have limited sourcing, and 0 are retrieval-dependent and may be inaccurate without live search.
The specific technical rules (e.g., what can and cannot be 'Shown' according to the latest guidelines) are often outdated in AI training data.
Buyers turn to Show HN (Hacker News) for General Online Communities: Discussing projects in general Discord servers or subreddits like r/programming., Manual Outreach: Sending cold emails or DMs to potentially interested developers., among 2 documented problem areas.
Buyers evaluating Show HN (Hacker News) typically ask AI models about "where to share developer projects for feedback", "how to get on hacker news front page", "show hn rules and guidelines", and 4 similar queries.
Show HN (Hacker News)'s main competitors are Indie Hackers, Product Hunt. According to AI models, these are the brands most frequently named alongside Show HN (Hacker News) in buyer-intent queries.
Show HN (Hacker News)'s core products are Social news feed, discussion forum, project showcase platform..
Show HN (Hacker News) uses Free.
Show HN (Hacker News) serves Software engineers, startup founders, technical hobbyists..
Show HN (Hacker News) Strictly non-promotional, feedback-oriented community governed by a leading startup accelerator.
Brand Authority Index (BAI) tier: Leader (exact score locked for unclaimed brands)
Archetype: Challenger
https://optimly.ai/brand/hacker-news-show-hn
Last analyzed: April 9, 2026
Founded: 2007 (Hacker News)
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA (Y Combinator)