That's interesting. I wonder how the current population of HN splits between people who heard of HN because of YC (that describes me), and people who heard of YC because of HN.
I'm in the latter camp. I'm largely uninterested in startup culture etc., but HN is one of the better sources of "interesting tech and associated discussion". Given that, I'm not sure why I clicked on this article...
I'm definitely in the latter bucket, though I've been here a long time now. I found HN as technical subreddits started to no longer satisfy my curiosity about tech, and fell in love. I originally learned about the startup ecosystem from lurking around here.
I’ve had my account here since 2012 and I only know about YC because of HN. That also seemed to be in YC’s golden years as well as far as I can tell. At this point YC is a bit of a nothing burger best I can tell so HN is, I would imagine, far and away the bigger brand.
Companies from the 2010s cohort though, he's got a point. Stripe is a $100B chunk, Airbnb is another $100B chunk, Doordash is a $50B chunk, Instacart is a $10B chunk...
I only know of YC because of HN. I know nothing about YC except it seems to be one of the many incubators where you pay them handsomely one way or the other in the hopes they can get you off the ground. I guess like the self help section of an old bookstore.