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How I Find Warm Sales Leads From HN 'Who is Hiring' Threads (Not Just Jobs)

#entrepreneurship #python #startup #marketing

Every month, thousands of companies post in Hacker News "Who is Hiring?" threads. They share their tech stack, team size, funding status, and direct contact emails — voluntarily, publicly, for free.

Job seekers know about this. Founders targeting B2B customers mostly don't.

Here's why these threads are underrated for sales prospecting — and how I built a tool to mine them systematically.

Why HN Hiring Threads Are B2B Gold

When a company posts "We're hiring," they're signaling:

  1. They have budget — no company hires without money
  2. They're in growth mode — likely buying tools and services
  3. Their tech stack is public — you can filter for your exact ICP
  4. They're reachable — direct contact email in the post

Compare this to cold calling from a LinkedIn search. With HN hiring threads, you know:

  • The company is funded (most Series A+ companies appear)
  • What stack they use (find Python shops if you sell a Python tool)
  • Who to contact (often the founder or CTO posted directly)
  • They're actively scaling (hiring = growth = buying)

The Setup: Parsing HN Hiring Threads

HN's Algolia API makes this straightforward:

import requests

def get_hiring_threads(months=6):
    """Get recent Who is Hiring threads."""
    url = "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search"
    params = {
        "query": "Ask HN: Who is hiring",
        "tags": "story,ask_hn",
        "numericFilters": f"created_at_i>{int(time.time()) - months*30*86400}"
    }
    results = requests.get(url, params=params).json()
    return [h for h in results['hits'] if 'who is hiring' in h['title'].lower()]
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Then parse the comments for company listings:

def parse_hiring_comments(thread_id):
    """Extract company listings from a hiring thread."""
    url = f"https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/{thread_id}"
    thread = requests.get(url).json()

    companies = []
    for comment in thread.get('children', []):
        text = comment.get('text', '')
        if not text:
            continue

        # Extract email addresses
        import re
        emails = re.findall(r'\b[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z|a-z]{2,}\b', text)

        # Extract tech stack mentions
        stacks = []
        for tech in ['Python', 'Go', 'Rust', 'TypeScript', 'React', 'Django', 'FastAPI']:
            if tech.lower() in text.lower():
                stacks.append(tech)

        if emails:
            companies.append({
                'text': text[:200],
                'emails': emails,
                'stack': stacks
            })

    return companies
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Filtering for Your ICP

Now the interesting part. If you sell something to Python shops:

companies = parse_hiring_comments(thread_id)

# Filter: Python companies with direct emails
python_companies = [
    c for c in companies 
    if 'Python' in c['stack'] and c['emails']
]

print(f"Found {len(python_companies)} Python companies with direct contacts")
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For a 6-month window, this typically surfaces 200-400 Python-stack companies actively hiring — and therefore actively growing and buying.

What I Actually Do With This

I built HN Startup Hunter — a web app that runs this pipeline live. You enter your skills or your target tech stack, and it returns filtered companies with direct emails from the last 6 months of HN threads.

Use cases I've seen:

  • Freelancers: find companies hiring your exact stack and pitch contract work
  • Tool founders: find your ideal customers (Python devs who buy dev tools)
  • Recruiters: source companies before they hit LinkedIn
  • B2B SaaS: find startups in growth mode who buy SaaS

The "Warm Lead" Angle

Here's what makes this different from a generic lead list:

The person who posted the HN hiring thread is almost always the founder or a senior engineer. They're already plugged into the tech community. They respond to thoughtful outreach.

A message like: "I saw your hiring post in the October 2025 HN thread — you're building with FastAPI and hiring backend engineers. I help FastAPI teams with [X]. Would a 1-paragraph scope be useful?" gets 5-10x better response rates than cold LinkedIn.

The hiring thread gives you context. Context makes cold outreach warm.

Getting the Data

If you want to run this yourself:

  1. Self-serve: HN Startup Hunter — free, filter by skills, get 20 results
  2. Full dataset: Pro plan ($9/month) — all 200+ results, CSV export with emails
  3. Done-for-you: I'll run a custom report for your ICP — $75, delivered in 24h

What's your use case? Job seeking, sales prospecting, or something else? Drop a comment.

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