My understanding is that it was originally just a place for people in YC-funded startups (or people otherwise affiliated with YC) to share useful/interesting li

My understanding is that it was originally just a place for people in YC-funded startups (or people otherwise affiliated with YC) to share useful/interesting links and information with each other. I don't associate HN (then or now) with any particular crowd, it's just an ever-evolving nexus of common interests that YC maintains as a public service more than anything else. I bet it's more focused on geeky interests and less focused on entrepreneurial topics than it was originally. Longtime readers might sense that it's more dumbed down or diluted now, but I suspect that's really just those longtime readers themselves getting more knowledgeable over the years, and HN seeming less revelatory than it did in the past. :) Example: it seems like everyone I know used to read Slashdot but stopped at some point when they realized how much the discussion quality had deteriorated. What's funny is how different people's timelines are. I thought Slashdot was a great resource in 1998 but felt like the quality of the comments had descended to mostly garbage by 2001. I know other people who are way smarter than me (but a few years younger) who will swear that Slashdot was awesome in 2003 when they started reading it, but lament its downfall circa 2008 or something. The biggest factor in an individual's Slashdot timeline seems to be, they loved it when they were younger, less mature, and less knowledgable, then as they got older and more experienced they started getting annoyed by it. But really, Slashdot's demographics didn't change nearly as much as they did.