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Oddest part of this post to me is that the author founded HN, but largely abandoned it because dealing with the users was a huge mental sinkhole for them; not a

Oddest part of this post to me is that the author founded HN, but largely abandoned it because dealing with the users was a huge mental sinkhole for them; not able to find the quote, but clearly recall him saying this, though might be wrong. As it relates to HN, PG what have you learned from the users? If HN was a startup, would it make it into YC?

stingraycharles 4y ago
Totally depends on the ambition; perhaps it was never PG’s ambition to completely understand and “own” the target audience of HN, but rather wanted to delegate that responsibility, to focus on YC’s core users instead. It may be precisely because of a tendency to understand and improve, that it is a mental sinkhole.
O__________O 4y ago
Found the PG quote I mentioned: ____________________ >> Here's a little known fact about the history of Y Combinator. The single biggest source of stress, for me at least, was not picking startups or advising them or Demo Day or even fighting with people on the startups' behalf. It was running HN. >> Don't start a forum. ____________________ Above was posted to Twitter Jul 11, 2020 — please see link below for additional context: - https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282052801347100675 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282052801347100675
robocat 4y ago
> PG what have you learned from the users? To me it appears that the users of HN and the users of YC have slowly become a disjoint set. I felt it used to be more of an internal message board where founders interacted, and outsiders were welcome. It is now more of a publishing media outlet, with few founder cross-interactions. You might as well ask about other groups of users PG is — or was — associated with. HN turned out to be a side-track, and PG hasn’t posted here for two years https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg — the last time he really interacted was when he posted about his hobby project, bel. > If HN was a startup, would it make it into YC? It would lose it’s HNness, become more social media. It could monetise by political influence, rather than advertising dollars. Disclaimer: my own opinions. No idea what PG thinks.
- O__________O 4y ago
  My core point I was indirectly making, as both a founder and advisor, is that in my experience it is frequently easier to give others advice about learning from users than to be the one literally dealing with users and making something meaningful of those exchanges. As for the decline of HN, having been around HN long, long time, in my opinion there’s no real pattern, or at least there’s massive amount of randomness that people tend to read into. If you’re interested in interacting with founders on HN, very easy to do, if you’re intentional about it. As for if HN was focused on growth, would it change? - Maybe, though I would like to hope that would be a net positive, not negative. PS - In case you missed it, posted the comment by PG related to HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32918742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32918742

stingraycharles 4y ago

Totally depends on the ambition; perhaps it was never PG’s ambition to completely understand and “own” the target audience of HN, but rather wanted to delegate that responsibility, to focus on YC’s core users instead. It may be precisely because of a tendency to understand and improve, that it is a mental sinkhole.

O__________O 4y ago

Found the PG quote I mentioned: ____________________ >> Here's a little known fact about the history of Y Combinator. The single biggest source of stress, for me at least, was not picking startups or advising them or Demo Day or even fighting with people on the startups' behalf. It was running HN. >> Don't start a forum. ____________________ Above was posted to Twitter Jul 11, 2020 — please see link below for additional context: - https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282052801347100675 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282052801347100675

robocat 4y ago

> PG what have you learned from the users? To me it appears that the users of HN and the users of YC have slowly become a disjoint set. I felt it used to be more of an internal message board where founders interacted, and outsiders were welcome. It is now more of a publishing media outlet, with few founder cross-interactions. You might as well ask about other groups of users PG is — or was — associated with. HN turned out to be a side-track, and PG hasn’t posted here for two years https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg — the last time he really interacted was when he posted about his hobby project, bel. > If HN was a startup, would it make it into YC? It would lose it’s HNness, become more social media. It could monetise by political influence, rather than advertising dollars. Disclaimer: my own opinions. No idea what PG thinks.

O__________O 4y ago
My core point I was indirectly making, as both a founder and advisor, is that in my experience it is frequently easier to give others advice about learning from users than to be the one literally dealing with users and making something meaningful of those exchanges. As for the decline of HN, having been around HN long, long time, in my opinion there’s no real pattern, or at least there’s massive amount of randomness that people tend to read into. If you’re interested in interacting with founders on HN, very easy to do, if you’re intentional about it. As for if HN was focused on growth, would it change? - Maybe, though I would like to hope that would be a net positive, not negative. PS - In case you missed it, posted the comment by PG related to HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32918742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32918742