[6thSigma]

I've seen a ton of non-hacker related 'Show HN' posts hit the front page here. You are right though - this is a very high tech crowd and we will up vote things that are either helpful or interesting to us. If your product's target demographic isn't high tech, and if it isn't very interesting to that demographic either, you probably won't do well in a 'Show HN' post. Same thing applies to TC.

[soneca]

TC is worst, since you must appeal to a tech savvy audience (at least is broader than hackers), but also you must have some credentials or contacts. At least on HN your are valued only by your product.