1052 pts on HN. I'd say they are pretty good at marketing actually.

HN readers are awesome at saying something is great and upvoting it, but unless HN readers are your market it means absolutely nothing. Marketing is as much about putting your message to the right audience as it is about saying the right thing.

This is made more complicated because a group as diverse as HN readers probably does contain some people who are in your target market, to be fair. The problem is that you're getting a strong signal from the whole cohort rather than the bit you're interested in, and it's really easy to conflate that with a sign of success.

As always with any startup activity, unless people are actually giving you their money it doesn't count and you should consider it a vanity metric.