One of the most famous places to engage with passionate entrepreneurs and builders is Hacker News, an online community launched in 2007 by the startup accelerator Y Combinator. Today, it's become a community-driven news source where techies around the world share news and discuss what's hot and what's not.

For some entrepreneurs, Hacker News has grown into an interesting platform for receiving free feedback and/or engaging new users. Some founders have reported gaining more than 60,000 unique visitors in 24 hours after their website was mentioned on Hacker News, while others have reported gaining hundreds of new active users or valuable constructive feedback through the online community.

For the majority of entrepreneurs though, HN, as its readers have dubbed it, remains an unworkable or even disastrous medium, due to its opaque rules and ruthless community that won't accept self-promotion.

This white paper, which I wrote with Paris-based startup accelerator StartUp42, has attempted to sort out the complex rules of this community, by compiling various success and failure stories and experiences in order to draft some do’s and don’ts. What we discovered is that choosing the right title, picking the right time to post, and asking your friends for assistance can help, yet much still relies on luck and being part of the community.

Read more below.