Ask HN: If it were to be sold, how much would HN cost?

1•01-_-•1h ago

Comments

colesantiago•1h ago

$0.02

01-_-•1h ago

Haha, you failed.

bigyabai•1h ago

I don't know if they're wrong. HN's primary utility is promoting YC's job openings and product announcements alongside the more important industry-wide news. Turn it into a generic link aggregator, and owning/moderating/updating the site might be more trouble than it's worth.

01-_-•1h ago

You forgot to mention the great discussions that take place here and that revolve around topics that are very relevant to your readers.

viraptor•1h ago

It is, but that doesn't bring value for the owners on its own. Something else has to exist on top, or you'd have to run the service and moderation on donations. The forum on its own has negative value.

colesantiago•18m ago

You failed realise that bookface is of much much more value than HN.

HN is just a free link aggregator, you can't make money from it.

bookface is only accessible to YC founders, which means YC founders have given a chunk of their company away to access it (as a bonus)

You see, the network of bookface (and bookface its self as a part of YC) is more valuable than HN.

Bender•1h ago

If it were to be sold, how much would HN cost?

I think it would have to include YC itself so in the billions, or if one counts the portfolio then theoretically hundreds of billions but only YC's financial people could really answer that and even then the market would have to decide. HN is just a link aggregator and link discussion site under YC.

Guestmodinfo•1h ago

Atleast around 1B$, because it is a prime discussion place for tinkerers. It makes sense to be valued at around 2 cents worth compared to what twitter was

01-_-•1h ago

exactly

bigyabai•1h ago

While we're at it, I'd like to propose a valuation of $5 billion for Neogaf. Any objections?

01-_-•1h ago

Whoa, hold on! That's a lot of money :D

They must already be earning something from the ads.

uberman•37m ago

I have to disagree. In my opinion, there is no real way to monetize this in a way that the community would embrace. You might run ads or email campaigns for a year but I imagine most users would just go someplace newer or better. No way to monetize ultimately means no value.

toomuchtodo•1h ago

What is the value of Wikipedia? Hard to value public goods, because the value of HN comes from its mods. I suppose if one must, start at whatever gains YC has seen on its investments during HN's lifetime, with some discount for the fact that ZIRP is unlikely to occur again and the future will not be like the past wrt the startup ecosystem. There is no guarantee a new owner would cultivate the same forum participants who might consider being a founder or employee of a YC portfolio company. The product is YC portfolio company stock; HN is machine to leverage curious, driven people as fuel for VC gains, with the consumer excess being brain tickles for the rest of us.

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-...

https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report

Ask HN: Acceleration of a Drop Falling Through Mist?

How has public history changed since 1951?

Kew: Simple Static Site Generator

The Great Re-Aggregation: Vertical AI and the Battle for the Control Point

Ask HN: What app/website do you think should exist? (non-AI)

PBS News Hour West to go dark after ASU discontinues contract

Ask HN: Has your iPhone Safari been hijacked by ChatGPT?

Evolution by Natural Induction

Computational prediction of human genetic variants in the mouse genome

The Most Dangerous Spot on Caltrain

The Present and Future of HPC Networking with Cornelis Networks CEO Lisa Spelman

The Model T of Agentic AI was Introduced in 2025

Controversial Dakota Pipeline Gets a Big, Belated Government Boost

What building a Package Manager taught me

Humanoid Robots for War and Work: Startup Plans to Build 50K by End of 2027

Building Slatron: The Digital TV Scheduling and Automation System

Shoshana Zuboff: 'AI is surveillance capitalism continuing to evolve and expand'

Show HN: Promptty – AI Prompt Manager for iOS

GEMM Performance Optimization Across Generations of Ryzen AI NPUs

Samsung Investigating Whether Employees Accepted Kickbacks for Memory Orders

A visualizer for BPF program state

Senators Want to Hold Open Internet Hostage, Demand Meta Write the Ransom Note

2 Days with Gemini-3-flash, def a good model

The Weird OS Built Around a Database [video]

Show HN: Faithful Today: A Privacy-First Journaling App (No Cloud, Local Storage

QuickCurrency – Free currency converter with no sign-up required

Trump signs executive order to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug

GoRules: Open-source Business Rules Engine for your applications

At least $9B billed across 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota may be fraudulent

Miracle the Dota Goat

Ask HN: Acceleration of a Drop Falling Through Mist?

How has public history changed since 1951?

Kew: Simple Static Site Generator

The Great Re-Aggregation: Vertical AI and the Battle for the Control Point

Ask HN: What app/website do you think should exist? (non-AI)

PBS News Hour West to go dark after ASU discontinues contract

Ask HN: Has your iPhone Safari been hijacked by ChatGPT?

Evolution by Natural Induction

Computational prediction of human genetic variants in the mouse genome

The Most Dangerous Spot on Caltrain

The Present and Future of HPC Networking with Cornelis Networks CEO Lisa Spelman

The Model T of Agentic AI was Introduced in 2025

Controversial Dakota Pipeline Gets a Big, Belated Government Boost

What building a Package Manager taught me

Humanoid Robots for War and Work: Startup Plans to Build 50K by End of 2027

Building Slatron: The Digital TV Scheduling and Automation System

Shoshana Zuboff: 'AI is surveillance capitalism continuing to evolve and expand'

Show HN: Promptty – AI Prompt Manager for iOS

GEMM Performance Optimization Across Generations of Ryzen AI NPUs

Samsung Investigating Whether Employees Accepted Kickbacks for Memory Orders

A visualizer for BPF program state

Senators Want to Hold Open Internet Hostage, Demand Meta Write the Ransom Note

2 Days with Gemini-3-flash, def a good model

The Weird OS Built Around a Database [video]

Show HN: Faithful Today: A Privacy-First Journaling App (No Cloud, Local Storage

QuickCurrency – Free currency converter with no sign-up required

Trump signs executive order to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug

GoRules: Open-source Business Rules Engine for your applications

At least $9B billed across 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota may be fraudulent

Miracle the Dota Goat

Ask HN: If it were to be sold, how much would HN cost?

Comments