I have never seen a successful (rich) founder posting here. Is there a reason for that? Is it that once they become rich, they have to shut up? What about before they got rich? There is no trace of any activities of these people on the Internet/any forums. Or is it because a successful founder tends not to spend any time on internet/forums?
Depends on your threshold for "rich", but the #1 in the list of HN posters (https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders), tptacek, sold his startup for >$10m.
I am extremely small potatoes compared to some of the people who occasionally post here. Jason Fried, for instance, posts on stories about 37s.
If we're talking the Larry Page scale, well, Marc Andreessen posts here often enough to have noticed Maciej Ceglowski's Co-Prosperity Cloud; he saw a comment I left about a $50 follow-on investment and matched it.
True, you are no Bill Gates, or even Marc Andreessen. I think you would still qualify as a successful founder who posts here, though.
How successful? Depends on your perspective. I thought I had relatives who I would classify as "extremely successful" and "rich", and they sold their companies for... high 5 figures. :) I must admit, my vision gets a bit blurry when it comes to distinguishing between numbers with 8+ figures...
Any opinion they shared here would be splashed all over every tech rag scouring HN for news to rehash faster than cnet can turn someone else's chat with woz into a 'apple founder says android is better!' article.
Doesn't pg count as a successful (rich) founder? He might not be a billionaire, but he ain't poor. I think he's involved in some kind of business that invests in start ups.
His last submission was nearly 3 year old.
His comments and submissions were mostly about his product.
His post history has shown that he's substantially cut down his activities on HN.
This case shows a negative correlation between success and activities on HN.
I am not sure how much better their advice would be than that of the HN'ers who have enjoyed success as founders but with thinner wallets. Brin etc. experiences from ramen to $50 million are roughly equivalent to that of others, and for anyone pushing toward $10 billion from $1 billion, there are probably better ways to pick their brains than in an HN comment thread.
While it would be entertaining to see them posting here, a Reddit AMA is probably a better forum.
Its not about rich or poor. Its about focus and need.
Early in the product/company building stage you need to be doing lot of development (assuming you are a tech co-founder), but as company grow, most likely your profile is going to grow as well and now you are not developing anymore (or at least not so often). And hence there is much lesser need to be on dev/hacker network. Now they have team of devs, and I am they are here, contributing.
