Does No Response Mean a Bad Idea?

Question

I've posted on Ask HN a couple of times, asking for feedback or thoughts on ideas I'm exploring, but I get no real interaction. No upvotes, no comments.I'm wondering: does that generally mean the idea is just not interesting, or is it more about timing or wording?Would love to hear how others interpret silence on HN. How do you know if it's your idea that didn&rsquo;t resonate, or just a quiet post?

andsoitis · Accepted Answer

I looked at your Ask HN posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=samehsbs)
I think your expectations of the HN community doesn't quite match what people are primarily on here for. If I may; you're treating it as a way to get early feedback on startup / product ideas, but HN users are primarily here to discuss or debate interesting topics, not to help you get a product off the ground.
Yes, people also provide feedback on products, but usually it is in a later phase of its development and then lands as a Show HN.
If you look at the Ask posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/ask) you will get a sense of what kinds of things resonate.

JohnFen · Answer

I don't think you can assume that no response means the idea is bad. When I pass on these, sometimes it's that, but sometimes it's that the idea is something that may be good, but isn't something of interest to me, or isn't something I know anything about, or isn't something I have an opinion on. Sometimes, I don't feel like I understood what was said well enough to have a comment about it. Sometimes, it's about the title: if the title doesn't tell me the topic, or is clickbaity, then I'm not even going to read the post. Sometimes the idea is something that is not actually relevant to what HN is about.And sometimes it's just timing -- as in, I never saw it.

PaulHoule · Answer

Personally I feel like the /new page is flooded with "here's a low-effort business idea based on AI, what is your feedback?" or "here's something I vibe coded that almost worked" or "how come vibe coding works when other people do it but it doesn't work when I do it?" or "I never even used GPT-5 but here's my hot take!"
If you had serious plans to make a GPT-6 that's a different thing but we don't want to hear about "me too" ideas unless you've got something to back them up, and probably don't if you do have something to back them up -- I think you'd get better result pitching something AI powered without ever saying "AI".
But seriously, the average post to HN gets exactly 1 vote. Don't take it personally.