I constantly tried to get feedback to validate the idea. As I mentioned before, it started as a simple list of brands and has now evolved into a full platform, thanks to feedback from users :) It seems that HackerNews user want a certain maturity of a product/website.
There's also just a huge amount of randomness involved. It's common for a story get posted a bunch of times, all ignored, then on the nTH submission it happens to get traction and hits the front page.
