3 ms·

I wonder how many visitors of HN, like myself, sometimes forget that there's all of the Y Combinator stuff going on behind it...

by nness 13y ago

stingraycharles 13y ago
That makes me wonder, are there any other examples of a regular business' forum spinning off like this? And to dive into it a little further, in hindsight this can be seen as a brilliant marketing move by pg, but was this intentional?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ASneakyFox 13y ago
  Devshed. But as soon as the owners realized that was happening they decided to kill off the community with in forum blackberry ads. Every one dispersed within a year including me. Over all I think Its bad. Eventually the fact that the goals of yc aren't aligned with hn will be revealed. Then every one will disperse.
  - stingraycharles 13y ago
    Couldn't you say that about any for-profit community? In the end it's their goal to make money off the people in the community. With HN at least it's pretty transparent (with submissions like these).
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    The goals are aligned well enough for this to work for a very long time, the fact that HN is now moderated by someone not directly affiliated with YC should help as well. Let's not give up before the match is lost.
  - brudgers 13y ago
    HN is aligned with the goals of YC because it provides a useful source of information about [some] applicants. From what I read, the success of a startup is in part dependent upon the communication and technical and social skills of its founders, and HN is a forum where all of those are often on display. A YC application plus an HN profile is going to lead to better filtering than just a YC application. More than that, in YC's business model the cost of running HN probably doesn't even amount to rounding error. Until recently the website was running on a single server [it may still be, since I haven't heard otherwise since the infrastructure change to Cloudflare] and with PG himself handling a significant portion of the maintenance and coding. In other words, the financial side of a business like YC is incompatible with most people's experience in offices - it's not about profits from sales. It's about internal rates of return on working capital.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

I wonder how many visitors of HN, like myself, sometimes forget that there's all of the Y Combinator stuff going on behind it...

by nness 13y ago

I wonder how many visitors of HN, like myself, sometimes forget that there's all of the Y Combinator stuff going on behind it...

stingraycharles 13y ago

That makes me wonder, are there any other examples of a regular business' forum spinning off like this? And to dive into it a little further, in hindsight this can be seen as a brilliant marketing move by pg, but was this intentional?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ASneakyFox 13y ago
Devshed. But as soon as the owners realized that was happening they decided to kill off the community with in forum blackberry ads. Every one dispersed within a year including me. Over all I think Its bad. Eventually the fact that the goals of yc aren't aligned with hn will be revealed. Then every one will disperse.
- stingraycharles 13y ago
  Couldn't you say that about any for-profit community? In the end it's their goal to make money off the people in the community. With HN at least it's pretty transparent (with submissions like these).
- jacquesm 13y ago
  The goals are aligned well enough for this to work for a very long time, the fact that HN is now moderated by someone not directly affiliated with YC should help as well. Let's not give up before the match is lost.
- brudgers 13y ago
  HN is aligned with the goals of YC because it provides a useful source of information about [some] applicants. From what I read, the success of a startup is in part dependent upon the communication and technical and social skills of its founders, and HN is a forum where all of those are often on display. A YC application plus an HN profile is going to lead to better filtering than just a YC application. More than that, in YC's business model the cost of running HN probably doesn't even amount to rounding error. Until recently the website was running on a single server [it may still be, since I haven't heard otherwise since the infrastructure change to Cloudflare] and with PG himself handling a significant portion of the maintenance and coding. In other words, the financial side of a business like YC is incompatible with most people's experience in offices - it's not about profits from sales. It's about internal rates of return on working capital.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]