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Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
- very_good_man 2y agoHey as a 20th birthday gift to the internet, why not stop censoring comments?
- dang 2y agoHN has always been a curated/moderated site. I'm not really sure what "censor" means other than that, at least in the context of an internet forum like HN. We basically moderate posts that break the site guidelines (the ones that we see, at least). Is there a particular post that you feel was censored that should not have been? I'd be interested to take a look.
- very_good_man 2y agoThe censorship is almost non-stop. And no, it wasn't "Always Like This!"
- dang 2y agoIf it's almost non-stop, it should be easy to link to a few examples, no?
- very_good_man 2y agoprobably half of my comments are flagged or reported. that's censorship. look at the comment history yourself and stop censoring people.
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- kamikazeturtles 2y agoIt seems the first few batches of YC were VERY successful. But, the number of successful YC companies I can think of from the last 10 years of batches is very minimal despite them investing in thousands of companies. Makes you wonder, does the funding landscape need a new YC level disruption because YC seems to have peeked, return wise (not hype wise). Maybe AI might be their saving grace if everything works out
- astonex 2y agoI think all the recent AI slop dominated batches will be their downfall in 2-3 years time when they all become junk and the AI-hype is over.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoYa that is my fear. Just like the whole crypto dominated batches. My fear is Garry Tan is leading YC and he falls for every single "the current thing" in the book. I remember when he was pushing for so much of the crypto stuff and all of that evaporated to nothing.
- astonex 2y agoYep, since Garry took over YC has fallen off drastically in my opinion
- anthomtb 2y ago> he falls for every single "the current thing" in the book. I remember when he was pushing for so much of the crypto stuff and all of that evaporated to nothing Isn't this what an early-stage VC firm is supposed to be doing? Lots of investments in companies working in whatever the hot new tech may be. Most companies lose, some break even, one wins so big you forget about the rest. High risk, high reward, high volume is always how I thought of a firm like YC. And one expects a lot of investments to evaporate to nothing for such an industry.
- Invictus0 2y agoYou might find this blogpost eye opening: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-magic https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-...
- Diederich 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 is always fun to look at, 18.5 years ago.
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- jessekv 2y agoHuh. I upvoted it.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoFun there's enough posts in HN you could type your DOB (no leading zero) and find a submission for it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52590
- Arubis 2y agoIt took me a moment to think through what a leading zero on a DOB meant and that it wasn't a Long Now foundation thing.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago52950 What format of DOB is that? M/DD/YY?
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- dredmorbius 2y agoOr possibly a Julian date for a first-millennial.
- btilly 2y agoThere are actually enough that you can type your DOB in the format YYYYMMDD and find a submission for it! This has been true since https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=20190615 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=20190615 was posted on June 15, 2019.
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- CokeFaultSoyuz 2y ago[flagged]
- arjunaaqa 2y agoJessica is my hero. Paul is a guiding force. Every effort has some defect but it’s intention and effort which matters. World would be a very different place without YC. Thank you all !
- dowager_dan99 2y ago>> but it’s intention and effort which matters. I think I understand what you're saying, but this is a very dangerous generality. I think the HOW matters more than the intent.
- nine_k 2y agoThe idea here, AFAICT, is that the right intention matters even if the implementation is lacking and imperfect. If the intention is there, the implementation will improve. The dangerous line of thinking would be that a good intention somehow justifies doing evil things, and not by mistake but knowingly, for an ulterior greater and noble goal. But then the intentions would include doing an evil thing as an intermediate step, and, as the comment says, the intention does matter.
- milesrout 2y agoIntent is the only thing that ever really matters.
- Apocryphon 2y agoDid Stilgar write this
- EGreg 2y agoHaha wow, good one
- Apocryphon 2y agoLooks like the Dune show even introduces a YC: https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Ynez_Corrino https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Ynez_Corrino Incidentally, querying "YC Dune" on DuckDuckGo / Bing yields that link in the results, but Google does not, which seems rather troubling for the modern state of that search engine.
- warrentr 2y ago[flagged]
- infinghxsg 2y ago[dead]
- dredmorbius 2y agoOn Twitter, with all that's going on?
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- jeffbee 2y agoGarry Tan and the rest of YC leadership are 100% aligned with Musk's goal of crashing the American economy so they can subjugate labor and buy assets cheap. It can't be a surprise they post on X.
- femiagbabiaka 2y agoUltimately that will be the legacy of YC.
- briandear 2y agoWhat’s going on?
- declan_roberts 2y agoOne of the things that makes HN great is that it largely avoids the Current Thing discussion. There's plenty of places to get into that. Can't we have one that's focused entirely on hacker news and not any political news?
- dang 2y ago(hmm that's a frequently asked question; I wonder if we should have a list of such things) If you want to know how we think about this, here's a pointer to a bunch of past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- dredmorbius 2y agoHN is increasingly a significant participant in current US politics. Attempting to pretend otherwise really doesn't work. HN has a policy of moderating discussions of YC companies less than other threads (and yes, "less" != "not at all"). There's a strong argument that a similar policy should apply to HN-adjacent politics and political acts. Posting to what was once called Twitter today is an increasingly political act. and a strongly anti-democratic one. Yang (as evidenced by his Wikipedia bio) is a political actor.
- Starlord2048 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoWe're getting complaints from users that your comments are LLM-generated. Of course it's hard to say for sure, but if they are (in whole or part), please stop. Generated comments aren't allowed here; HN is for human conversation.
- nashashmi 2y agoWhat you have identified is nurturing tech development and this has become easier. But more complex tech development should now be the next focal point of incubators. And this means founders who have more speciality in the work they do. There is still a gap that needs fulfilling. YC is one player who can fulfill it. Late-stage startup development is a business structuring problem and the biggest blank slate for new founders. From term sheets to understanding convertible debt to navigating VC maze.
- jedberg 2y agoHappy birthday YC! YC has created a ton of value, and I can say is responsible for the major inflection point in my career. I'm forever grateful to Paul, Jessica, Robert, and Trevor for seeing the value in the reddit team before anyone else did. Incidentally, reddit turns 20 in just a few weeks (if you count from incorporation :) )
- alberth 2y ago"Founders at Work", written by Jessica is what got me into HN (and I was an initial lurker for quite sometime). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founders_at_Work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founders_at_Work Note: YC didn't have HN to begin with, it was launched 1-year later (Oct 2006 as seen by pg profile). And the book was launched the subsequent year (2007). https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg
- wheelinsupial 2y agoIn case you’re not aware, there is a podcast by Jessica Livingston and Carolyn Levy called “The Social Radars” that interviews founders.
- azhenley 2y agoDownloading it now. I didn't know about it. Looks like there are a lot of big names!
- lobsterthief 2y agoThanks for the recommendation; I’ll check it out! I love that this podcast only comes every two weeks. Some (like Software Engineering Daily) are far too often so I either feel the paradox of choice or that I’m missing out.
- hakaneskici 2y agoSuch an inspiring book - I still have it by my desk :) I bought it because they covered Joel's FogBugz and 37Signal's Basecamp (I was building a competitor product back then).
- sturadnidge 2y agoIt’s the book that started it all for me. The Hotmail story is one of my favourites.
- light_triad 2y agoThere's going to be a lot of "the big successes already happened" type comments about YC but I think they're wrong. Sure all big successes are unique in time, and entrepreneurship & web tech are mainstream now. But there's still lots of industries to disrupt. What gets harder is that the level of expertise needed to disrupt an industry is now much higher. You didn't need to work in hotels to create Airbnb, or a bank to create Stripe, or deliveries to do Doordash, etc. A bunch of scrappy web founders that were hosts, or trying to sell on the internet was expert enough to get started. This may be changing in important ways, but huge successes will surely happen.
- borski 2y agoWhen YC started, people were saying literally the same thing; the dotcom bust had already happened, and the era of big internet companies was 'dead.' As usual, the death of entrepreneurship and startups has been greatly overstated. :)
- ant6n 2y agoI‘m not so sure YC is really targeting industry experts in their fields who are doing startups, or?
- pclmulqdq 2y agoYC wants to target established industry experts (every investor does), but I am not sure their median founder is over 25.
- JambalayaJimbo 2y agoDoesn’t YC still predominantly fund young men who aren’t at all industry experts in some mature field? It appears like the majority of startups I see are “AI for X” type applications.
- light_triad 2y agoI think this is more a reflection of the applicant pool. It's easier to put together a team when folks are early in their careers - also if you've been in industry for some time you might know VCs and are already an 'insider' to that industry
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- CSMastermind 2y agoI remember the initial PG announcement about the founder's summer program and wanting desperately to be a part of it. I wasn't at a place in my life where I ever could join YC but the tribe that's been built by everyone involved has added tremendous value to my life. I'll always be incredibly grateful that this place and YC exists.
- _sentient 2y agoYC changed my life, and I'll be forever grateful to PG, Jessica, and the team for taking a chance on a homeschooled, GED-wielding solo founder.
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoIt's really good to read those stories. I applied twice (once alone, once with a really amazing co-founder) and it felt like applying to a large faceless corporation, both times. Automatic rejection after 30 days with zero feedback. Kind of sucky, to be honest. I'd just love to hear that the idea was shit, the application was shit, that my face was ugly, or anything, really.
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoProbably hard to give valuable feedback on tens of thousands of rejected applications.
- firefax 2y agoI keep forgetting there's a front page to this website. What a cool story!
- whiplash451 2y agoQuick bump for The Social Radars which is an amazing podcast co-led by Jessica. A treasure trove of true startup stories.
- urda 2y agoI thank dang for putting up with me.
- ok_dad 2y ago... with all of us.
- bloomingkales 2y agoI confess.
- ryanisnan 2y agoHappy birthday YC!
- npodbielski 2y agoHacker News is just 19 years old? I remember my professor at university mentioning it when I told him I am using .net for my project. According to him I should use OS language like Java and recommended me to HN. I thought it is much older. Time flies. I wonder if he is raeading HN still...
- weinzierl 2y agoY Combinator is 19 years old. Hacker News was launched in February 2007, so it just turned 18. For the longest time I thought Hacker News must have been some proof of concept for Reddit and must pre-date it, which is not true. Reddit was launched in June 2005, shortly after Y Combinator.
- paganel 2y agoAs I remember it HN was initially a “response” to Reddit written in Arc, as by that point Reddit had already become focused on politics and some other more general stuff and had left its programming focus behind. HN was meant to fill that gap, with the important addition of the “entrepreneurial” / start-up business mambo-jambo behind which I could never get, but there were a lot more people that did get it seriously back then and which now have a lot more assets than people like me (didn’t care about start-ups, we were in here only for the programming stuff) now happen to posses. Lesson learned, I guess.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoAppreciate this community. HBD Y!
- bdamm 2y agoHN has been an outstanding corner of the Internet, seemingly invulnerable to all the trash that has consumed the rest. I'd love to know how HN has avoided the bots and the spam, while retaining a simple and elegant login process.
- outside415 2y ago[dead]
- IsopropylMalbec 2y agoA benevolent dictator.
- light_triad 2y agodang is an amazing moderator
- zfg 2y agoNah, he's become a cynic. dang thinks Hacker News is a "swamp of amnesia". It's not a great attitude.
- thomassmith65 2y agoThat reflects well on his communication skills; 'Swamp of Amnesia' is a less hackneyed phrase than 'Eternal September'
- zfg 2y agoNo, he thinks things don't matter because no one will remember them. He's wrong.
- thomassmith65 2y agoDan's moderation practices are viewable via his comment history*. They align well with my preferences, but, with a little imagination, I can see how some people wouldn't like them. One person's idea of good moderation is another person's terrible moderation. * https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
- keybored 2y agoI sometimes forget that this is a venture capitalist website with a weirdly computer science name. Okay fine. You can have this one day, main YC website.
- scubadude 2y agoIt really is the strangest community. Clearly an ex-slashdot flavor to it like free the penguins and then someone will make a comment that right-to-repair "increases costs and reduces profitability" and shouldn't be allowed. I don't think these people would naturally have a beer together.
- no_exit 2y ago[flagged]
- slackfan 2y ago[flagged]
- smcl 2y ago[flagged]
- mempko 2y agoHe's a supporter of the genocide in Gaza, so yes.
- thom 2y agoFounders - what would the ideal accelerator (or call it what you like) look like today?
- 0xCE0 2y agoI'd say the only real reasons any founder needs "accelerator"/any kind of VC firm is lack of money and/or domain-specific professional help/mentoring when encountering a problem that seems to be too hard to overcome by yourself. So, ideal accelerator/VC would be one that would want to fund your (ad)venture without taking too much motivation off by having large ownership/control, and have connections/pool of domain-specific professional expertise. And wants to believe in you.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoI’d suggest more specialization to reflect that some domains have materially different execution models, evolutionary timelines, and product playbooks when done optimally. There is some of this but it feels like there is often a tacit default model that every startup is social media, simple SaaS business, or similar and is biased toward what works in those domains. There are VCs that specialize in less conventional startup domains but the accelerators that teach people how to quickly and effectively execute some of these domains are limited when generic startup advice no longer applies. If you are doing hardcore data infrastructure software, some kinds of defense tech, et al the startup building process is sufficiently different that first-time founders would benefit immensely from accelerators that really understand from direct experience what those startups need to do to be successful.
- dangapeass 2y ago[dead]
- 0xCE0 2y agoHN has been my very favorite website that I consciously open every day since last ~15 years. It is the portal to get the ambient and relevant view of the techland. I love the near-non-BS nature of it. And even though the techland changes, HN itself has had very little change, so it acts somewhat safe stable ground/forum/club for observing the ever changing techland. Although I recognize there is somewhat minimal degration in comment quality (less professional pragmatic comments over the years, at least so I feel), it still trumps every other alternative there is. So, thank you PG/HN, and of course the HN community that makes most of it. PS. I have been read-only mode for the past ~15y (and there was nothing valuable for me to comment on anything), but now I created account and this is my first comment :)
- cobbaut 2y ago> HN has been my very favorite website that I consciously open every day since last ~15 years. It is the portal to get the ambient and relevant view of the techland. I bet a lot of people here would say the same thing about Slashdot ten to fifteen years ago. @HN: Thanks and please don't change.
- echelon 2y agoHN has outlasted Slashdot by a wide margin at this point. IIRC, Slashdot stopped being great around the same time as the decline of the Digg era. It started to sink in quality around 2007, which gave it ten years at most of being a central part of the online tech community (1997 - 2007). I started reading HN in 2008. It's lasted nearly twenty years as an incredible community. Here are some graphs: https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/01/slashdot-fail.html https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/01/slashdot-fail.html
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- SLHamlet 2y agoLOL thanks for the link!
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- HPMOR 2y agoYC built the culture of the valley, community and startups <3
- thomasfl 2y agoMy HN account is 18 years old. Still no successful businesses to speak of after a few attempts. Have started an NGO instead to promote better urban planning and design.
- hypertexthero 2y agoHappy birthday, YC! There isn’t a website on the internet that I’ve learned more from than this one. Thank you.
- computerex 2y agoLong live Y Combinator, the source of endless inspiration and innovation.
- 7e 2y agoYC has been exploiting naive founders for 20 years. Congrats everyone.
- agluszak 2y agoHN is cool, the startup factory - meh
- paul7986 2y agoBeen and enjoyed HN since the launch of Justin.tv ... 2006 / 2007. This exact username Ive used on and off from 2007 to 2013/2014 then solely since then. My karma is low for such an account but my thoughts are odd lol ..i guess
- codr7 2y agoBeen here since day 1, I was already semi-following PG because of his writing on Lisp.
- submeta 2y agoStarted reading HN nine years ago, when I screwed up my third startup the year before, was devastated, and needed some inspiration. And among the shared news were stories that inspired me again, that made me come back to this site every single day ever since. I like the cultivated discussions, like the things I learn about, and I feel like I never miss any tech trend. Excellent community. Love it. Thank you PG, thank you Dang! Thank you to all the contributors for the high quality content.
- itsthecourier 2y agowhat happened next!?
- dwaltrip 2y agoYou only discovered HN after your 3rd startup? :p
- lisper 2y ago> I screwed up my third startup You're half way there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42771676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42771676
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- octernion 2y agowhy on earth did they not post this directly to HN? who goes to twitter in 2025
- mrguyorama 2y agoHN's higher level folks like Gary Tan are uh, very friendly with Elon and his ways. They consider the current state of twitter a success.
- antirez 2y ago[I guess the tweet refers to YC the incubator, not the web site of news, but I want to focus on the latter]: I registered on HN a few days after it was created. The HN community was incredibly instrumental to my career, my ability to keep up with the development community, with like-minded people, and to have a voice, the times my posts and projects reached this home page. Thank you, for for all of that. Now, I see that, inevitably, as this place becomes bigger and bigger, there is no longer that strange, odd and wonderful "90s News Groups" alike quality. Despite the decline, I still find quite some value visiting this place every day.
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoAgreed. HN was how I learned about tech growing up in poverty (back when I used to think Googlers all wore lab coats!) and gave me the inspiration to both study CS and pursue the career I was lucky enough to end up in. The bigger HN gets the more it has qualities I don't really like, but it's also the last text platform I consume without curation on my part. (I know dang and the mod team do a heroic job, but I do very little curation of my own here, unlike Bluesky, X, or Discord where I do a lot of things to keep my feeds/channels useful to me.)
- sam0x17 2y agoI agree. For me though it was only when slashdot started to shrink that I heard about HN, so I was a bit late to the party. To be fair, I still check slashdot almost daily!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- manoweb 2y agociao I still use newsgroups (NNTP) and IRC everyday, hackernews is pretty good considered it's HTTP based
- fsckboy 2y agohttps, if we're goin oldskool
- callc 2y agoHN is the only internet community I’ve found to be largely good. Thank you to everyone for all your kind posts and comments, and intellectual discussion. Love to you all.
- Freedom2 2y agoAgreed. Thank you to all for the endless curious discussion.
- mempko 2y agoIt's a good community. The part I struggle with is the anti-science trend I've seen here over the last 10 years.
- tempaccount420 2y agoFor me, it's the politics. There's a certain kind of user that keeps pushing them here, to people who don't care about them, and which are barely related to technology if even. If you point it out, they will say "everything is political"...
- genewitch 2y agoSpace isn't political! https://youtu.be/g1Sq1Nr58hM?si=ZyRYleQAfTe3PJMX https://youtu.be/g1Sq1Nr58hM?si=ZyRYleQAfTe3PJMX
- closewith 2y ago[flagged]
- 998244353 2y agoI feel like this is kind of pedantic - if your definition of the word "political" renders their point moot, then clearly they must be using a different definition. But I understand what you mean. The problem is that 99% of online discussions about politics are not about how it relates to anything else. They are usually the same 5 conversations rehashed over and over again. And for some reason, they are aggressively derailed in that direction.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- harryquach 2y agoI love this community, the only social media worth investing time into. Here's to another 20 years.
- throwawaymaroon 2y ago[dead]
- bflesch 2y agoThankful for this nice community. Also thankful for demonstrating that investors are just lucky humans and there is no secret sauce to all of this. 20 years of YC, nearly the same time frame as the low interest rate policy (started at 2008). The rising tide lifted all boats and thanks to social media we can also see the magic go away in real time.
- Razengan 2y agoand still none of the people in the charge have decreased eyesight for the site to have a more accessible theme. Amazing
- jaza 2y agoThanks for existing, HN! And thanks to everyone that makes it awesome. My no. 1 stop on the interwebz for going on 10 years now. Please keep being the only not-s** online community left standing.
- trainspotter 2y agoWhile I've never worked with YC directly (though have lots of friends who have been involved with YC in one way or another), I found HN during the pandemic and it has been my favorite place on the internet ever since. I have learned so much from this community, across so many different disciplines. I truly cherish the community we have here and I thank Dang, PG and others for maintaining this gem in a hidden corner of the internet. And while I agree there have been some changes even in the time I've been a part of the site, it's still the best online group of people I've ever come across. Thank you also to all of you who make this such a great, informative, inclusive community.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Clubber 2y agoThanks for making HN, the best forum since the old slashdot. Thanks for moderating it for us, dang.
- xingwu 2y agoHappy birthday and thank you!
- Deprogrammer9 2y agoCOOL, maybe update the site now? Just sayin....
- b8 2y agoThanks PG, and daang. HN got me my first real job in security.
- idomajid 2y agoHappy birthday and thank you! I am really lucky to find this community.
- rootsudo 2y agoHappy Birthday! I'm happy to be a part of this community - it's the only real place nowadays on the Internet outside some financial forums where you can really chat with founders, startups, and see the converge of business and tech!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- eointierney 2y agoThank you to PG and dang. I reckon this is one of the best places on the Internet. Thank you everyone. I come here to learn and I do. The standard of discourse is heightening. You're amazing
- ellis0n 2y agoHappy Birthday, YC! I've been a regular participant in the HN community since 2012. All these years HN has inspired me and during this time I've learned a lot. I started back in the days of building FIDO, when the first point networks appeared. Of course, I’d love to see more communities and fewer bots, but progress is unstoppable. I wish the HN community to thrive and remain strong for many years to come. I'm creating a mobile reader (iOS app) specifically for HN and if you want to join to speed up the process, you're Welcome! https://www.acpul.org/blog/yc-happy-birthday-20 https://www.acpul.org/blog/yc-happy-birthday-20 For those who don't have iOS, I started a Twitch stream for the vibe. https://www.twitch.tv/guynpc https://www.twitch.tv/guynpc PS: I fear that I’ll never get into YC and in the future there will be no more startups, only an AI, and I’ll have to work as a battery cell in the Matrix.
- lamuswawir 2y agoThis community provides the most informational value to me. Thank you people and long live.
- russellbeattie 2y agoCongratulations HN! (And @dang of course). Can we please add target="_blank" to the links now? (Seriously, I've got a crisp new $50 bill for whoever takes 30 seconds and slips it into prod. )
- subless 2y agoAlso, thanks to @dang for keeping the community in-line with the rules/guidelines.
- dang 2y agoI wish. But thanks!
- raldi 2y agoMy list of "greatest all time community-runners" is pretty short, and I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone I'd put ahead of you.
- johnfn 2y ago+1
- ignoramous 2y agoAs an ultimate service to newsboards all over, dang should consider writing a book at some point distilling all his thoughts, practices, advice, lessons learnt.
- jppope 2y agonah its true, this is one of the few places left on the web thats friendly and thoughtful (most of the time at least). That is directly related to your work keeping things civil. thank you
- Melatonic 2y agoHell yeah !
- rossant 2y agoYes, thank you @dang. HN wouldn't be HN without you.
- dangrape123 2y ago[dead]
- october8140 2y agoHe should get a bsky
- nullbyte808 2y agoWhy did they post on X? Most of the people on there probably think HN is a Soros front. Also, why does it say twitter.com and not x.com? Would have been better just to post a link from their blog.
- Dave_Rosenthal 2y agoI worked with pg in a three-person startup in a basement in Harvard square just before he started YC. I was an undergrad at MIT and met him after arguing with rtm (who was a TA for my class) about TCP backoff. It was called Aspra and we were trying to build an app development platform for mobile phones. The idea was that you could build an application that could "render" to either an IVR system, for dumb phones, or the kind of web page that a Motorola "smartphone" of the day could view. Ahead of its time, like Paul. It didn't go far, and not long after he started YC. Good thing he did, for the industry and many of the folks here! Anyway, the "20 years" got my attention because I didn't feel that old, and thought someone might like the little story.
- jimhi 2y agoWow! I've read all the essays and thought I knew all the startups ideas he had tried by now. This is a new one.
- racedude 2y agoLove this story. Thanks for sharing. I learned about YC/HN via my tools course at Purdue, and it continues to be a great resource.
- knuckleheadsmif 2y agoIn the mid 90s (1996?) So myself and 3 others worked for Intuit and we traveled, from Mountain View CA, to your tiny office near Harvard to look at acquiring the company. I believe Intuit made a lowball offer and eventually you sold yourselves to Yahoo for twice the price. At Intuit we did not offer you guys money for the product, it really was not that special at all, but for the people—I thought only 3 folks at the time? The product was a web store front builder (Viaweb?) I don’t think we actually talked to Paul that day but I remember Trever and the tiny ‘server’ room. It possible we may have met you too. It was a long time ago.
- Dave_Rosenthal 2y agoYou were talking to a slightly earlier company--this was post Viaweb.
- captnphilip 2y agoHappy 20th Birthday, Y Combinator! In 2008, I transferred schools and moved to San Francisco with just $600 and a dream. Soon after, I started my first design agency, Badaboom Labs, hiring my college roommate and friends. With no company formation experience, I had no idea how to get clients either, so I walked to every coffee shop in the city, hoping to land my first gig. My break came at The Creamery in SoMa. They were still remodeling, but I was determined to talk to the owner (shoutout to Ivory if you're reading this!). Eventually, they became our first client, then Vans. Back then, Squarespace, Stripe, and Shopify didn’t exist, so I hired developers off Craigslist to build the e-commerce side. Looking back, the opportunities were endless in building software! We barely made any profit, but we had our first client and were building something real. At the time, I was more focused on building with a team than understanding customers. I knew little about scaling or growth, but I just needed to start—and learn as I went. As the team moved on, I sold the business to a small print shop. That experience led me to experiment with new ideas, but my limited technical skills slowed me down. I knew I needed to level up, so I worked at startups, then moved into SAP & Apple—but corporate life wasn’t for me. I learned what I could, then quit. The YC Journey Around that time, I started meeting founders from YC through mutual friends and our soccer club in the Mission. I didn't understand what YC was exactly, but I was intrigued. Some of them lived in a hacker house on Howard & Rausch St. in SoMa, where I remember meeting Justin Kan, Drew Houston, and Brian Chesky for the first time. Twitch didn’t exist yet, Dropbox was still new, and Airbnb was struggling with growth. Imagine if I invested in just one of these companies. holy cow. It was a defining era, but at the time, I had no idea just how much these companies would shape the future—honestly, I don’t think anyone did. I was simply inspired by the energy, the community, and the drive to build something great! That’s when I decided to apply to YC with my third company, RecurPal I was rejected multiple times.. But I kept pushing. Then, YC opened up applications to their second program. I applied, interviewed, and got in. Shoutouts + Gratitude I’m super grateful for the mentors, friends, and investors who shaped my journey: Jude Gomila (always believing in me & taking a chance), Anton(wisdom + friendship!), AJ Asver(former co-founder & friendship), Immad Akhund (support + friendship), Roger Dickey (building epic community at Greenwich Castle), David Langer (wisdom + friendship!), Sumon Sadhu, Dilan Dane(my first Burning Man Project), Gustaf Alströmer ( footy teammate + friendship), Keith Rabois, and many more! Lastly, thanks to Jessica Livingston, Paul Graham, and the YC Community. Excited to see YC continue shaping the future and fueling the next generation of founders!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- calrain 2y agoPlease stop using X If the bar lets Nazi's in, it's a Nazi bar.
- calrain 2y agoDon't down vote me, resist...
- tjmc 2y agoCongratulations YC! I remember prior to HN, pg used to post his essays to Slashdot under the username Bugbear and all the attendant sniping and lame memes that would come back in response. Hacker News was a breath of fresh air and continues to be my favourite online community.
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoThankfully, Natalie Portman setup a Beowulf cluster with hot grits to handle my memes! I quite like(d) that silliness - but your could always choose to downgrade and hide 'funny' posts. I still miss the post/comment visibility functions from Slashdot. Looks like pg 'joined' 6 Oct 2006; so we've a bit to wait for the HN 20th anniversary.
- dailyplanet 2y agoI used to look up to YCombinator, but now I am disappointed in the role YCombinator played in platforming anti-democratic figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Nick Land, Curtis Yarvin, etc. who espouse scientific racism and eugenics with their obsession of race-based IQ levels and their desire for European whites to dominate over others. Big Tech's disruption model is not good for stability and notions of tolerance and decency. Happy 20th Birthday I guess.
- liotier 2y agoThe brave comment I was looking for... I feel the same: Silicon Valley used to be holy Mecca to this French person; since I started having Internet access in the early 90's, all daily online activity was turned towards it - and some of that remains, as I log on here. To me, the financial success of the companies was a minor side-effect of the technological utopia which was the main point. But those who found financial success turned Silicon Valley into a toxic brand... They managed to make quietly progressive European companies look cool in comparison !
- Amaresh 2y agoEternally grateful to PG and Jessica.
- raminf 2y agoHN has been a daily read for last 15 years. Appreciate the information flow. Incidentally, after years of lurking, applied to the latest YC batch. Didn't make it, but will try again once further along, or with a new idea.
- effdatechbros 2y agoAnyone gonna mention Network Cities and the relationship to YC leadership or we just gonna ignore that?
- willy158 2y agoHappy 20th Birthday, Y Combinator
- DeathArrow 2y agoI wonder when it's HN birthday.
- dang 2y agoDepends how you track it I suppose: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 (Oct 9, 2006) https://news.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html https://news.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html (Feb 20, 2007) https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html (Aug 14, 2007)
- keepamovin 2y agoWho else applied to YC 15 times and never got an interview?
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoJust out of curiosity, what did you apply with?
- keepamovin 2y agoWith BrowserBox / CloudTabs, which is basically Hyperbeam (YC company) before Hyperbeam. And more to take it further and apply it web scraping, and documents.
- sivakon 2y agoFrom the likes of Silicon Valley, this person defending his friend who tried to blow up a critics car https://x.com/TrueAnonPod/status/1898155052159701148 https://x.com/TrueAnonPod/status/1898155052159701148
- jr-ai-interview 2y ago[flagged]
- jr-ai-interview 2y agoI invite hellbanes to cover up my leaks, they have to make the first move. It's obvious who I am IRL. No accountability will ever be taken except via us reporters throughout history. Just gentle hate speech towards the clear losers in this next phase of covid-19
- jr-ai-interview 2y ago[flagged]
- tzury 2y agoThis is the earliest HN post available online: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2
- RGamma 2y agoAnd after 20 years of acceleration the wheels are coming off. Anyway, HN at least is mostly cool still, I guess. So good job dang.
- hannah_creator 2y ago[dead]
- m2024 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dmos62 2y agoI'll use the opportunity to thank everyone for Hacker News: YC, the community, and dang. For me, it's been a special place with a special culture. No other community has provided me intellectual and social stimulation so consistently.
- chr1ss_code 2y ago<cocktail emoji> <pizza emoji> <cake emoji> <slice of cake emoji>
- helsinki 2y agoDamn, no shoutout to @sama in that tweet - harsh.
- c1one 2y agoNormally I just lurk... but in all sincerity, Congratulations! A truly wonderful place, thank you All!
- A_Stefan 2y agoBeen visiting this website for some time now and just made the courage to create an account and leave a comment. I'm glad and grateful this place was made. Another year gone, new one to come. Happy Birthday!
- chkhd 2y agoHN is one of very few places where I feel "at home". Thank you @dang, and everyone else!
- wwarner 2y agoAmazing number of household names that began at YC: Stripe, Outschool, Doordash, Reddit, Airbnb ... https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/
- Mariah42 2y ago[dead]
- Vixel 2y ago20 years? BRB, scheduling my ice float.
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- vlad 2y agoI registered @paulg on Twitter and "vlad" on news.yc in 2007 when this website (news.ycombinator.com) was "Startup News". Besides flying to the US Naval Academy, my first domestic flight was to Y Combinator Startup School in 2007. As you can see in my video, it would be the day before my birthday. Also, I had an app-based business, and Max Levchin and Mark Zuckerberg were speakers. Vladislav Yazhbin at Startup School with many early YC founders (Stanford, 2007): https://vimeo.com/3170520 https://vimeo.com/3170520 I don't know why I missed the talk by pg (Paul Graham) in 2005 when Y Combinator was founded, but I recorded videos in 2007 because I saw "Pirates of Silicon Valley" in high school about early days of Apple and Microsoft. It was obvious that my videos about Y Combinator could be valuable some day. And, I liked that Paul Graham studied art and programming with many people, while I had made a desktop product with paying customers all over the world. I even joined the companies that Y Combinator accelerated, Justin.tv in 2009 and DoorDash in 2020, to help them succeed. I visited Boston in 1995 (to get an award in the Governor's Office for winning a poster design contest judged by reporters, politicians, and art critics). I visited Boston again in 2002 after 9/11 (September 11) for my US Citizenship. I applied to the US Naval Academy and was nominated by U.S. Congress, although I was already attending a two-year technical community college. I focused on programming, similar to MrBeast making videos while attending a community college. My college is where George Washington built the first federal armory for United States, but they did not have student email accounts. In 2002, sitting in my Student President's office, I came up with the idea that I could verify students with the .edu domain name and I could make a website for my college. I was already Student President and already started a printed newspaper. Although each issue was funded with Student Activity fees, Student Activities Office wanted to review each article. However, an employee showed me she used "Black Planet" to share news, and MySpace and Facebook had not been invented yet. Unfortunately, I didn't want Student Activity Fees to be spent to buy server hardware and software because student had free personal @aol.com and @yahoo.com accounts already. I might have mentioned to a friend at Harvard University. Also, I worked as a high school volleyball official, therapeutic recreation aide at a nursing home (entertaining residents who have alzheimer's and dementia), and the campus police department on weekends. I also attended monthly meetings with other Student Presidents of Massachusetts public colleges. In late 2003, I launched "assfirm" to find and watch items and pay later for merchants on eBay, Yahoo! and Overstock. It was a bootstrapped, paid app for middle-age users who bought physical items on their computers. This allowed me to market and support a product for people older than students but younger than nursing home residents. In spring 2009, Sequoia was interviewing YC founders in the Mountain View office. I attended this event after arriving from the airport. I stayed in a Hacker House with some YC founders. I met new founders who were excited that I had "assfirm" as a company to buy physical products from merchants. I explained I wanted a name with A in the phonebook. I talked with Max Levchin (founder of PayPal and Slide) in the street in Palo Alto the same week. His next company was named "affirm" years later. Apple liked the user experience design of my Windows app in 2008. My company "assfirm" was selected by Apple to be the first to make native apps for the App Store in March 2008 before App Store existed. (At Startup School 2008, I don't think anyone else had been selected). I joined UMass Amherst for degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics. I proposed iPhone app designs for a Fortune 100 before I left to the four-year college, and built an app to track my phone's location as calendar events in university. I convinced the enterprise company and university to join Apple's corporate and education programs in 2008. In summer 2009, I consulted at Justin.tv and co-founded "Hot Or Not Live" with Michael Seibel, Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, and Kyle Vogt. Michael Seibel said he wanted to partner with me for their first API hackathon but said he was CEO and had no other contribution except his idea of rating livestreamers. I had better ideas like live shopping, maybe as a future company. Employees loved the "hot or not" rails demo that I built in hours. It had a video embed and used the REST API to find the next channel. Within hours, Justin.tv founders hosted it as hornotlive.com, and a new hot-pink design and logo, making sure it was on the company's heroku account in case they need to take it down. It was launched very quickly, like investors ask for. This scared Paul Graham and investors when they heard about it via Hacker News, TechCrunch, and Mashable. Also, the HotOrNot company threatened to sue. About two years later, Justin.tv founders launched "SocialCam" for chat and "Twitch" for gamers in 2011. Before I joined YouTube founders in 2012, I applied to Y Combinator with a mobile app to send messages and photos, and to sell stickers/emojis. I came up with the idea of a chat app with self-deleting photos, plus the way it would grow quickly. At Startup School, I overheard Evan Spiegel talk about Picaboo. I decided to excitedly share my ideas to a group and walked with him for a bit. When I joined YouTube founders in late 2012, a coworker told me she used Snapchat. At Startup School one year, Paul Graham smiled at me as I entered the building with a "Mohammed" nametag. When I was at Startup School to watch Emmett Shear's talk, Justin Kan said "you didn't do anything!" about my three months at Justin.tv, which was completely not true. I noticed that Sam Altman was staring at me with a neutral face. I didn't know what to say. I thought that maybe Sam Altman thought I looked like Elon Musk, which I heard before from YouTube founders (who worked at PayPal with Elon Musk), Instacart founder (who said I looked like half-Elon Musk, half-Jimmy Fallon), co-workers, etc. In 2019-2022, I built a gym at my house in San Francisco and thought I could be a magician, singer, and do impressions as Elon Musk, Jimmy Fallon (I wanted to interview BTS for "Dynamite" while I was in South Korea in summer 2020), Dimash, Keanu Reeves (who filmed Matrix 4 in 2020 in San Francisco but I hadn't seen the movies), etc. Another YC memory: I started a tech show on YouTube in April 2007 after Startup School. It's possible that I'm the first YouTuber to make videos to ask viewers to do things that help with algorithms (like leaving comments) while having almost no content about the topic. Also, an early usage of "Let's Go...!" Here's the episode about Justin.tv: https://web.archive.org/web/20210109212744/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-mXm7lzWfA https://web.archive.org/web/20210109212744/https://www.youtu...