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PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

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482 points ilamont | 1 comments | 11 Jul 20 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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dsr_ ◴[11 Jul 20 23:22 UTC] No.23807091[source]▶
The key to getting good discussions is to not have a profit motive coupled to eyeballs.

HN doesn't show ads, doesn't care about growth.

Large newspapers had strict firewalls between advertising, journalism and opinion -- but smaller papers had to fold to pressure from advertisers.

Subscription services need eyeballs badly -- but they need paying eyeballs, which means that they need to offer more than just outrage -- but if they don't show at least some of their content for free, they can't grow.

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1. zubairq ◴[12 Jul 20 04:39 UTC] No.23808866[source]▶
HN does care about growth as it does have moderators and methods to make sure that it is engaging with the right audience for Y combinator. And the profit motive is there, as a pipeline into YCombinator, you can see from many of the well integrated ads. Just because it is done so well, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Having been someone who has benefitted hugely from this I have no problem with it however