Didn't hit #1, but got to front page twice: once with SheetUI [0], another time with CS cards [1].

My observation on what I did right is similar: remove the need for sign ups so users can use it and see value immediately.

As for what happened after that, I've had one well known online Japanese tech zine (gigazine) did a write up, stackshare ranked it as top 5 upcoming tools, various back links from other websites that mine for interesting bits from HN, several VC reachouts, saw lots of interesting uses of my tool, and some recurring revenue.

[0] https://sheetui.com [1] https://cs.cards

I got to #2 with https://epub.to

It got tweeted a bit by some people, and used quite a bit.