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Ask YC:How did you first get to know about HN/Y Combinator?

7 points by aitoehigie ↗ HN
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?

16 comments

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yan
I 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
One of my articles got linked here, I found it in my referrer log.
Mankhool
Looking for startup funding, hence via TechCrunch.
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l0nwlf
Wanted 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
My adult son was talking about one of the articles he read by Paul Graham. I told him to send me the link.
bgnm2000
I think I saw something about YC on VentureBeat, but I didnt really start reading HN until an angel investor recommended it to me.
keefe
I 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
I 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
His essay on Lisp/HTML/Viaweb was a reading assignment in my Programming Languages class at Brown (thanks, Shriram!).
alaskamiller
When 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
I 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
I 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
Saw it mentioned offhand in an article about "Hackers", which of course made me come and take a look
iterationx
joel mentioned it in the SO podcast, i used to read reddit, but it seems so bad lately.