Ask HN: Who is Buying? (October 2025)

We have the monthly "Who is Hiring?" and "Who Wants to be Hired?" threads, which are incredibly valuable for connecting talent with opportunity.

Let's experiment with the other side of the marketplace: a thread for people and companies who are actively looking to buy a solution for a problem they have.

This is for founders, managers, and engineers who have a budget and are tired of searching for the right tool, library, or service. It's also for builders and vendors to find qualified leads for problems they genuinely solve.

Guidelines: - For Buyers: Please post a top-level comment describing your need. Follow the template below to give solution providers the best context.

- For Sellers/Builders: Please reply directly to a buyer's comment if you have a relevant solution. Do not post a top-level comment to advertise your product.

Buyer Template (please use this in your top-level comment):

PROBLEM: (Be specific. Instead of "I need a CRM," try "I need a lightweight, self-hostable CRM for a 3-person dev tools company that primarily integrates with GitHub and Slack. Salesforce is too complex.") BUDGET: (e.g., "$50-$200/month", "Up to $5,000 one-time for a perpetual license", "Flexible for the right solution.")

WHAT I'VE TRIED: (e.g., "We've tried HubSpot but found it too marketing-focused. We looked at Close but the per-seat pricing doesn't work for us. We've considered building our own but would rather not.")

IDEAL SOLUTION: (Describe what the perfect solution would look like. e.g., "An open-source tool with optional paid support, or a SaaS with a transparent API and fair pricing. Must have a clean, fast UI.")

CONTACT: (e.g., "My contact info is in my profile," or "Reply here and I'll reach out," or "email me at hn-buying[at]mydomain.com")