Cheap shot. You can't win with this one. You know what would happen if they described the product in a vacuum? The top comment on the HN thread would be "Basically, it's like an X for Y."
If somebody correctly makes a connection from your explanation to something they are familiar with, you have done your job.
If you need to make a connection with something you hope someone is familiar with in order to explain your product, you don't understand your product well enough.
Do you think it's important to differentiate your product in such a way that it can't be described as X for Y? I suppose there are arguments for either case.
If you can be described as X for Y, then you can make the argument that "it worked for the Z industry".
However if you can't be easily summed up as X for Y, you can claim that this is something completely new that's never been done before. And people like that...I think? I don't know, I'm rather new to this. What do you think?
If you need to make a connection with something you hope someone is familiar with in order to explain your product, you don't understand your product well enough.