Create a founder digest and leads from Hacker News with GPT-4o and Gmail
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Rahul Joshi
Description
📊 Description
Automate daily founder intelligence from Hacker News without manual monitoring. This workflow scans Hacker News discussions (Show HN, launches, AI, startups, SaaS), filters out noise and non-discussion pages, and extracts only high-signal threads. AI then converts these discussions into a concise, founder-ready daily digest highlighting key trends, why they matter, and practical actions. The digest is delivered via email, while structured insights are logged to Google Sheets for long-term tracking and analysis.
⚠️ Deployment Disclaimer
This template is designed for self-hosted n8n installations only.
It relies on external MCP tools and custom AI orchestration that are not supported on n8n Cloud.
🔄 What This Template Does
1️⃣ Runs automatically on a daily schedule ⏰
2️⃣ Searches Hacker News discussions via Google using SerpAPI 🔍
3️⃣ Extracts titles, summaries, links, and metadata from results 📄
4️⃣ Filters out guidelines, index pages, and non-discussion links 🚫
5️⃣ Aggregates valid discussion threads into a single dataset 📦
6️⃣ Uses AI to identify key trends, problems, and founder-relevant signals 🧠
7️⃣ Generates a concise daily founder digest (trend, why it matters, actions) ✍️
8️⃣ Sends the digest automatically via email 📧
9️⃣ Cleans and normalizes insights for storage 🧹
🔟 Appends structured founder intelligence to Google Sheets for tracking 📊
✅ Key Benefits
✅ Eliminates manual Hacker News scanning
✅ Surfaces only high-signal, founder-relevant discussions
✅ Converts raw discussions into clear, actionable insights
✅ Delivers a daily, skimmable founder digest automatically
✅ Builds a historical intelligence log in Google Sheets
✅ Creates a repeatable founder research workflow
⚙️ Features
Daily scheduled execution
Hacker News discovery via Google Search (SerpAPI)
Noise filtering with custom JavaScript logic
AI-powered trend and insight extraction
Founder-focused digest generation
Email delivery via Gmail
Insight archiving in Google Sheets
🔑 Requirements
SerpAPI account
Azure OpenAI credentials
Gmail account connected to n8n
Google Sheets account
Self-hosted n8n instance
🎯 Target Audience
Startup founders tracking early signals
Product and growth leaders monitoring trends
VCs and analysts scouting emerging tools
Teams needing automated market and founder intelligence
This workflow was created by Rahul Joshi and shared publicly on the n8n community template library. n8nFind indexes it for discovery — the workflow remains the property of its original creator.