A 3-actor Hacker News intelligence stack — Show HN tracker, Who’s Hiring scraper, and the full-story-feed Hacker News Scraper — composed with cross-links to YC, Form D, Product Hunt, and Indie Hackers. For VC associates, indie hackers, B2B SaaS sales teams, content marketers, and dev-tools companies who need structured HN signal beyond what Algolia’s free search delivers.
Hacker News is one of the highest-signal feeds on the internet for tech sourcing — but the official tools around it are deliberately minimal. (1) HN’s own Algolia search is free, fast, and great for one-off lookups, but has no batch export, no analytics, no scheduling, no joinable identifiers. (2) The official HN Firebase API is free but returns raw item IDs requiring N+1 fetches and has no batch-export semantics. (3) HN email digests are read-only and give you no structured data. (4) Indie Hackers’ built-in analytics cover IH-published products, not HN — and the two communities only partially overlap.
NexGenData’s HN intelligence stack fills the gap with three composable per-result actors: Show HN Tracker, Who’s Hiring Scraper, and the front-page-and-search Hacker News Scraper. Each returns clean JSON/CSV with author, points, comment count, domain, posted-at, and joinable identifiers. Run them on a schedule, drop the output into your CRM, your VC pipeline, or your dev-tools competitor-tracking sheet. Typical monthly cost for a sourcing team: $15-60.
The 3-actor HN intelligence stack
| Surface | Use case | Actor | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full HN feed + search | Front-page, top stories, keyword search across all of HN | Hacker News Scraper | Story title, URL, author, points, comments, posted-at |
| Show HN board | Founder-shipping-product signal — pre-seed VC sourcing + dev-tools ICP | HN Show HN Tracker | Show HN title, author, domain, points, comments |
| Who’s Hiring monthly thread | Vetted engineering-led-company hiring-intent signal | HN Who’s Hiring Scraper | Company, location, stack, remote flag, contact link |
Why this beats Algolia HN search and HN email digests
| Feature | NexGenData HN stack | HN Algolia search (free) | Algolia HN-search API | HN email digests | Indie Hackers analytics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Batch export (CSV / JSON) | Yes | No | API-only, rate-limited | No | IH platform only |
| Show HN focused tracker | Yes | No (manual filter) | No (manual filter) | No | No |
| Who’s Hiring structured output | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Historical date-range pulls | Yes — billed per result | Yes — manual | Yes — rate-limited | No | Partial |
| Scheduled / webhook delivery | Yes — Apify scheduler | No | API-only, build yourself | Yes (passive) | No |
| Joinable to CRM / VC pipeline | Yes — clean fields | No | Yes — build yourself | No | Partial |
| Monthly cost — 1 sourcing team | $15-60 (metered) | Free (no batch) | $$ enterprise tier | Free (no batch) | $$ IH Pro tier |
| Coverage beyond HN | Sister actors: YC, Form D, PH, IH, AngelList | HN only | HN only | HN only | IH only |
5 specific use cases across buyer personas
1. VC associate sourcing pre-seed via Show HN. Show HN posts that hit >50 points typically represent a founder who has shipped a v0.1 and is 6-12 weeks ahead of their Form D filing. Workflow: HN Show HN Tracker scheduled daily, filter to >50 points and a brand-able .com domain, manually triage to your sector (devtools, infra, security, AI, etc.), run the author’s HN username and the domain through HN profile lookup + WHOIS for founder identity. Result: 30-40 pre-seed-stage company shortlist per week, 4-8 weeks ahead of every Crunchbase-Pro-using firm. Cost: ~$8/week.
2. B2B SaaS dev-tools team running Show HN as fresh-product signal. A B2B SaaS targeting infrastructure-engineering buyers uses Show HN as a 6-12 month leading indicator — every founder shipping into the infra category will hit production scale in 3-6 months and face the buying decision your product solves in 6-12 months. Workflow: HN Show HN Tracker scheduled weekly, filter to infra-tagged posts (databases, observability, k8s, devops), enrich with Company Email Finder for founder contact, drop into your nurture pipeline. Reply rate at the 6-month touchpoint is 25-40% — the founder remembers Show HN day and engages.
3. Indie hacker studying competitor product launches. An indie hacker shipping a new SaaS in the same category as a recent Show HN launch needs to study the competitor: how their product was positioned, what comments revealed about user pain, which integrations were requested. Workflow: Hacker News Scraper on the specific Show HN URL to pull full comment thread, manually code top 30 comments by theme (feature request, objection, pricing concern, integration ask). Result: a 30-minute competitive deconstruction for $1-2 in actor cost. Compare to a $500-2K user-research engagement.
4. Content marketer identifying trending engineering topics. A B2B content marketing team pitching technical-buyer audiences uses HN front-page-velocity as the topic-prioritization signal: which engineering topics broke the front page in the last 14 days, sorted by points + comment count + adjacent-story-cluster size. Workflow: Hacker News Scraper on front-page stories for the last 14 days, group by inferred topic, rank by total HN engagement. Output: a weekly editorial-priority list — the highest-engagement topics that your category overlaps with. Cost: ~$3/week.
5. Dev-tools company running Who’s Hiring as ABM target list. A dev-tools SaaS targeting engineering-led companies treats the monthly Who’s Hiring thread as a high-precision ABM list — every company posting is by definition an engineering-led-buyer that is actively hiring and therefore actively spending. Workflow: HN Who’s Hiring Scraper on the monthly thread, filter to companies with your relevant stack tags, enrich with Company Email Finder for VP-Eng or Head-of-Eng contacts, drop into a personalized outbound sequence referencing the specific stack and role they posted. Reply rate: 12-18% vs 2-5% for generic outbound. Cost: ~$10/month.
Sister actors across the founder + funding + community fleet
HN is one signal in a broader composable stack. Pair the HN actors with the other NexGenData sourcing and founder-research actors:
- Hacker News Scraper — full HN feed, front-page, keyword search across all stories.
- HN Show HN Tracker — Show HN posts, the pre-seed-VC and dev-tools-ABM workhorse.
- HN Who’s Hiring Scraper — vetted engineering-led-company hiring-intent.
- YC Companies Directory — current YC batch + alumni roster.
- Startup Funding Tracker — Form D filings + funding rounds.
- Product Hunt Launches — consumer + SaaS product debuts.
- Indie Hackers Products Tracker — IH-launched products and revenue disclosures.
- AngelList Startup Search — AngelList company directory + investor index.
- Techstars Companies Directory — Techstars alumni roster.
- 500 Global Companies Directory — 500 Global alumni.
- Company Email Finder — verified founder + exec emails for outbound.
- Lead List Enricher — founder career-history enrichment via LinkedIn match.
Frequently asked questions
Why use this instead of HN’s free Algolia search?
HN’s Algolia search is great for one-off lookups but it has no batch export, no analytics layer, no scheduling, and no way to join HN posts to founder identity or company domain. The NexGenData HN intelligence stack pulls Show HN, Who’s Hiring, and full-story-feed data into structured JSON/CSV with author, points, comment count, domain, and posted-at timestamps — joinable to your CRM, your VC pipeline, or your dev-tools competitor-tracking sheet. For a VC associate doing daily sourcing, this is a 30-minute time savings per day vs manually clicking through Algolia.
How is this different from the official HN API or Algolia HN-search API?
The official HN Firebase API is free but rate-limited, returns raw item IDs requiring N+1 fetches, and has no batch-export semantics. The Algolia HN-search API is rate-limited at the free tier and the paid tier is enterprise-priced. The NexGenData HN actors handle pagination, rate-limit backoff, deduplication, and field normalization for you, then return clean CSV/JSON in 30-60 seconds for a full Show HN sweep. You pay per result instead of per API call, which is typically 70-90% cheaper for batch workloads.
What’s the use case for VC associates specifically?
Show HN is one of the highest-signal pre-seed sourcing channels — every founder posting a Show HN is shipping a product, often before they have a deck or even a Form D filing. The HN Show HN Tracker pulls all Show HN posts from the last 24-72 hours with author username, domain, points, and comment count. Filter to posts with >50 points and a brand-able domain, run the author’s HN username through HN profile lookup (career history is often in the bio), and you have a 30-40 company shortlist per week of pre-seed-stage founders shipping into your category. Pair with the Startup Funding Tracker to catch the same founders 6-12 weeks later when they file Form D.
Is this useful for B2B SaaS sales teams?
Yes — and this is a non-obvious use case. Show HN posts that get >100 points represent a fresh signal that a builder team just shipped something. For B2B SaaS targeting engineering teams (observability, devtools, infra, security), Show HN is a 6-12 month leading indicator of buying intent: the founder shipped a v0.1, will hit production scale in 3-6 months, will face the problem your product solves in 6-12 months. The HN Show HN Tracker output paired with Company Email Finder gives you a continuously-refreshing top-of-funnel for dev-tools-buyer outbound at $0.10-0.30 per qualified lead.
Does the Who’s Hiring tracker give me useful hiring-intent signal?
Yes. The HN Who’s Hiring monthly thread is one of the highest-signal hiring-intent boards on the internet — every post is a vetted engineering-led company actively hiring, typically with stage / location / stack / compensation. The HN Who’s Hiring Scraper actor returns each post structured: company, location, stack tags, remote-friendly flag, contact link. For dev-tools companies running ABM, this is a high-precision target list — every company posting in Who’s Hiring is by definition an engineering-led buyer. For VC associates, it is a real-time hiring-velocity signal across a portfolio.
Can I get historical trend data, not just live?
Yes. All three HN actors accept a date range and return historical posts. Common patterns: pull the last 12 months of Show HN posts in your category, time-series the post velocity to spot category emergence (e.g., RAG infra posts spiked 8x from 2023 Q4 to 2024 Q2); pull 24 months of Who’s Hiring to time-series the hiring velocity of a specific company (a portfolio company you are diligencing); pull 6 months of HN front-page stories filtered to your category for editorial-trend research. Historical pulls bill the same per-result rate as live pulls.
How does this compare to Indie Hackers’ built-in analytics?
Indie Hackers’ built-in analytics are useful inside the IH platform but they only cover IH-published products, not HN-launched products — and the two communities only partially overlap. The HN intelligence stack covers HN-launched products specifically, which is where most YC and pre-YC technical founders launch. For an indie hacker studying competitor product launches, the right move is to run both — Indie Hackers Products Tracker for IH-launched products and the HN Show HN Tracker for HN-launched products — then dedupe by domain to get the full picture.
How fast can I get started?
Sign up for a free Apify account, get $5/month in free credits, and run the HN Show HN Tracker on the last 7 days. You will have a 200-400 row CSV of Show HN posts with author, domain, points, and comment count within 30 seconds. From there, layer in the HN Who’s Hiring Scraper on the most recent monthly thread, and the Hacker News Scraper on the top-front-page stories for the last 24 hours. Total time to first useful dataset: under 5 minutes.
Get started
Sign up for a free Apify account at apify.com/nexgendata — $5/month in free credits lets you queue the HN Show HN Tracker on the last 7 days and have a 200-400 row CSV in under 30 seconds. Layer in HN Who’s Hiring Scraper and the full Hacker News Scraper for complete coverage. Pay-per-result means no commitment beyond what you actually use.