"First of all no matter what you launch, if you hope that you simply put your submission out there, and it will end up in the top 5 of the day, most certainly this is not going to happen. If you wanna get there, you have to come up with a plan to promote your listing and get the upvotes." - so, it looks like that was (at least partially) wrong.
Why would you think that it's not possible to launch it more or less organically? It's definitely possible here on HN, why would PH should be very different?
At the very end - don't focus on promoting that much, especially artificially, build the product people love and you get your front page.
