3 ms·
Ask YC:How did you first get to know about HN/Y Combinator?
I first got to know about Paul Graham/YCombinator and the "Hacker News" when I did a Google search for the term "web 2.0" way back in 2007. I read his essay and over the course of time I have probably read virtually all his essays which have been a great source of inspiration to me considering the fact that where I live (Lagos, Nigeria) still has a very poor hacker/startup and VC community.
Thats my story, so I would like to know how you first got to know about Paul Graham/YCombinator and Hacker News?
- yan 17y agoI wanted to learn lisp a while ago, and stumbled on pg's ANSI Common Lisp after reading a few glowing reviews. Then I read some of his essays, then heard about YC, then arrived here. Don't remember exactly when I first saw this board or the day I registered, but haven't been able to stay away since.
- chaosmachine 17y agoOne of my articles got linked here, I found it in my referrer log.
- Mankhool 17y agoLooking for startup funding, hence via TechCrunch.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- l0nwlf 17y agoWanted to purchase a lappy and a friend of mine posted my doubts here. Seeing the quality of response I started hanging out here regularly.
- Mz 17y agoMy adult son was talking about one of the articles he read by Paul Graham. I told him to send me the link.
- bgnm2000 17y agoI think I saw something about YC on VentureBeat, but I didnt really start reading HN until an angel investor recommended it to me.
- michaelfairley 17y agoBeating the Averages (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html) is one of pg's more famous essays, and I've seen it make it's way some tech sites a few times in the past ~5 years.
- keefe 17y agoI moved to silicon valley in 07 and was (and still am) very interested in the bookmarking space... I was doing an analysis of delicious and came onto a link for startupschool, which I then applied to and got into, not really understanding anything of what was going on until after the event... So actually, Jessica Livingston told me about what YC was at a reception for startup school, which is probably a unique way to get an introduction, if not the best way to make a first impression. (:
- nostrademons 17y agoI found out about Paul Graham through comp.lang.lisp. Way back in my freshman summer of college, I had an internship where I didn't really have very much or very important work to do, so I spent a lot of it reading about Lisp. Graham's name came up a lot, and his essays were interesting. Ended up reading On Lisp after that. I moved over to Hacker News from Reddit the day it became publicly available.
- lsb 17y agoHis essay on Lisp/HTML/Viaweb was a reading assignment in my Programming Languages class at Brown (thanks, Shriram!).
- alaskamiller 17y agoWhen kiko.com first came out and then I read about reddit.com. I then stumbled upon his essays and hid in the server room of work for two days to read them all in one sitting. I'm still not rich yet.
- tannerhiland 17y agoI remember coming across a pg essay (via Google or Slashdot) a year or two ago then reading through a dozen more. That led to YC which lead to Jessica's book, Hackers News, and lots of hours learning web development (current career is in network architecture).
- andreshb 17y agoI am not sure about how I came to hear of it, but I remember accessing the website in 2006 while looking at funding options for a startup I had in mind.
- JimmyL 17y agoSaw it mentioned offhand in an article about "Hackers", which of course made me come and take a look
- iterationx 17y agojoel mentioned it in the SO podcast, i used to read reddit, but it seems so bad lately.