If anybody is asking you "are you trying to crowdfund" and your answer is "yes,", you've clearly failed at conversion, marketing and UX design.
90+% of people who would be willing to sponsor this stuff will go "hmm, I wonder where they've taken their money from, not us I guess." Not everybody reads comments, even fewer post ones of their own.
Being on the front of HN is a great opportunity, I'm afraid you haven't used yours as well as you possibly could.
