>Are both of us HackerNews' products? Yes. We the users of HN are product - both individually, and also as a market segment, and also as a smart[0] crowd. Fro

>Are both of us HackerNews' products? Yes. We the users of HN are product - both individually, and also as a market segment, and also as a smart[0] crowd. From [1], Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups. To Y Combinator, the HN is both entry to the sales (investment) funnel, and a PR machine. And also early opinion & commentary, early beta-testing, load testing [2], and more. That is not to detract from the (very probable) angle of pg & team wishing to render a public service for the public good :-) -- [0] the occasional bad thread notwithstanding ;-) [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/about/#whatwedo https://www.ycombinator.com/about/#whatwedo [2] aka HN hug of death