I don't think there are enough connections among individuals in the community to make that work. HN doesn't place a high priority on identity. No avatars, no karma display, no username differentiation. I'd bet the average HN member can only recall around ten HN usernames they have a good idea of the personality & project of.

http://socialstrategist.com/2008/04/16/your-users-are-boring...

HN did start a cofounder wishlist GoogleDoc a while back.

You can find it in a more searchable format on http://StartupLinkup.com

I agree with the parent.

Write up an Ask HN post about your project or idea and ask for feedback and then maybe at the end say that you're looking for someone to help with it as a partner. Or something along those lines.

As much as we'd wish HN to be a different type of community, this is still an online community and you can only know the next HN'er as much as anyone knows anybody else from an online community. However, when you discuss things of a non-superficial nature then you'd get to have a feel of the other person's personality.