Ask YC: How do you start a social bookmarking site (like HN) w/o an audience?

I've been experimenting with a site like HN, but quickly realized in order for stories to become popular you need a decent amount of people on the site participating. Without users, I seem to have 2 choices: Let everything appear on the home page, or show the very small amount of content that is voted on (or 3, make a bunch of dummy accounts and fake it). Thoughts?