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My humble perspective, HN serves several purposes: 1) Top of the funnel lead gen for emerging companies (for YC to invest in). 2) Persistent advertising for t

My humble perspective, HN serves several purposes: 1) Top of the funnel lead gen for emerging companies (for YC to invest in). 2) Persistent advertising for the YC brand. You can’t use HN without associating it with Y Combinator and by being useful it brings in millions of views to the brand at relatively little cost 3) A proprietary way to learn more about the founders they invest in. I’ve read a users HN profile (what they like dislike, quality of comments) is an important source of unadulterated intel. As for value, I wouldn’t know how to calculate it but given the size of their “classes” and speed of rise, it clearly serves as a very effective in bound funnel for investing in quality startups. Definitely in the millions, not sure if billions unless it directly contributed to their biggest and best investments. EDIT: I’ve left out other ancillary benefits like a distribution platform for YC companies looking to hire and such. Lastly, value is relative. The value of HN to YC (or to perhaps other VCs) is larger than the value to say me who couldn’t make as much use of the benefits enumerated above. There are a lot of intangibles here.

narrationbox 6y ago
What is YC's privacy policy on 3?
- dang 6y ago
  I don't know of any privacy policy on it but HN doesn't really overlap with YC applications. pg used to say that he'd sometimes recognize a username as being a smart commenter on HN, and maybe that would be more likely to get them an interview (I suspect as much because he wanted to meet the commenter as because he thought they might be worth funding). But I don't think it was ever a big deal, and I doubt happens at all anymore. "An important source of unadulterated intel" is definitely not true. Sometimes I notice someone doing interesting work on HN and get in touch with them and try to convince them to apply to YC. I'd like to do more of that.
  - lefstathiou 6y ago
    Years ago I recall listing your hacker news user name was part of the YC application process (I have not applied in some time). Hard to believe that it wasn’t used as a screening mechanism at some point in the application process. Humbly defer to you of course.
    - dang 6y ago
      YC and HN use the same account system, so you still apply with your HN username. But it's not used as a screening mechanism and, as far as I know, no one involved in YC applications is in the habit of looking at HN posts. Certainly not systematically.
banneduse3r 6y ago
The biggest benefit is market manipulation and collusion. What better than to run a "news site", know what your users (who many are C levels, or VC projects by YC) are watching and how and when they are commenting. By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. YC can also control the narrative. "Voting ring detectors", shadowbans, blacklist names on articles all have a real and a hidden reason. And with no transparency, how do we know what they're doing and why? And did you know there's a secret YC-founder only feature. founders funded under YC can see each other as orange usernames. The rest of us.. Well. They can collaborate publicly as a bloc but the rest of us are none-the-wiser.
- krapp 6y ago
  seems legit.
- greenyoda 6y ago
  > By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. Anything that's posted by a company's founders in a public forum can hardly be considered "proprietary information". Anyone in the world can read anything on HN as easily as Twitter, Reddit, etc.
  - gruez 6y ago
    Votes aren't public afaik, so there's that.
- znpy 6y ago
  > YC can also control the narrative This. I've been noticing a lot of flagging lately.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    I've seen a couple of popular posts removed from the front page. The last one was criticizing Apple.
    - 6y ago
vl 6y ago
HN business model is to be marketing vehicle for Y Combinator. Y Combinator wouldn’t happen without HN since there would be no wide reach while it was still small. Ingenuity of course is sprinkling marketing material on top of community-created content. Compare it to Joel’s approach: produce interesting content and then use your blog to promote your companies. Worked out for Joel, but it just doesn’t scale well. Ironically it’s a bit neglected: it was unreadable on mobile devices for years, had no folding, etc. A bit of Reddit-like features would go a long way.
antonpuz 6y ago
Interesting points. Do you think YC actively contacts inventors which just share their work/research with the world and suggests mentoring or drives toward business forming?
weaksauce 6y ago
There’s also the posts that are marketing for ycombinator backed companies. Launches and stuff that are probably weighted a little higher so they stay on the front page longer. And of course selective screening for hiring from the group of people that are usually above average in the first place.
- dang 6y ago
  Launch HN posts get placed on the front page automatically. So do job ads. The difference is that Launch HNs are otherwise like regular stories that get upvotes and comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22launch%20hn%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

narrationbox 6y ago

What is YC's privacy policy on 3?

dang 6y ago
I don't know of any privacy policy on it but HN doesn't really overlap with YC applications. pg used to say that he'd sometimes recognize a username as being a smart commenter on HN, and maybe that would be more likely to get them an interview (I suspect as much because he wanted to meet the commenter as because he thought they might be worth funding). But I don't think it was ever a big deal, and I doubt happens at all anymore. "An important source of unadulterated intel" is definitely not true. Sometimes I notice someone doing interesting work on HN and get in touch with them and try to convince them to apply to YC. I'd like to do more of that.
- lefstathiou 6y ago
  Years ago I recall listing your hacker news user name was part of the YC application process (I have not applied in some time). Hard to believe that it wasn’t used as a screening mechanism at some point in the application process. Humbly defer to you of course.
  - dang 6y ago
    YC and HN use the same account system, so you still apply with your HN username. But it's not used as a screening mechanism and, as far as I know, no one involved in YC applications is in the habit of looking at HN posts. Certainly not systematically.

banneduse3r 6y ago

The biggest benefit is market manipulation and collusion. What better than to run a "news site", know what your users (who many are C levels, or VC projects by YC) are watching and how and when they are commenting. By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. YC can also control the narrative. "Voting ring detectors", shadowbans, blacklist names on articles all have a real and a hidden reason. And with no transparency, how do we know what they're doing and why? And did you know there's a secret YC-founder only feature. founders funded under YC can see each other as orange usernames. The rest of us.. Well. They can collaborate publicly as a bloc but the rest of us are none-the-wiser.

krapp 6y ago
seems legit.
greenyoda 6y ago
> By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. Anything that's posted by a company's founders in a public forum can hardly be considered "proprietary information". Anyone in the world can read anything on HN as easily as Twitter, Reddit, etc.
- gruez 6y ago
  Votes aren't public afaik, so there's that.
znpy 6y ago
> YC can also control the narrative This. I've been noticing a lot of flagging lately.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  I've seen a couple of popular posts removed from the front page. The last one was criticizing Apple.
  - 6y ago

vl 6y ago

HN business model is to be marketing vehicle for Y Combinator. Y Combinator wouldn’t happen without HN since there would be no wide reach while it was still small. Ingenuity of course is sprinkling marketing material on top of community-created content. Compare it to Joel’s approach: produce interesting content and then use your blog to promote your companies. Worked out for Joel, but it just doesn’t scale well. Ironically it’s a bit neglected: it was unreadable on mobile devices for years, had no folding, etc. A bit of Reddit-like features would go a long way.

antonpuz 6y ago

Interesting points. Do you think YC actively contacts inventors which just share their work/research with the world and suggests mentoring or drives toward business forming?

weaksauce 6y ago

There’s also the posts that are marketing for ycombinator backed companies. Launches and stuff that are probably weighted a little higher so they stay on the front page longer. And of course selective screening for hiring from the group of people that are usually above average in the first place.

dang 6y ago
Launch HN posts get placed on the front page automatically. So do job ads. The difference is that Launch HNs are otherwise like regular stories that get upvotes and comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22launch%20hn%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...