I definitely think that you're right about that, that the HN community is not the target audience but more of a board of critics taking a look. That's why after launch, I spent time (and money) into finding out what the target audience actually was and where to find them. I thought the brand strategist had a pretty good idea of the market, but no target users found so far.

What exactly do you mean with "going out to acquire users manually"?

Project: https://qeys.io