

Ask HN: If Hacker News was a startup, what would be its valuation? - kilimchoi


======
greenyoda
Assuming the current business model (free, with no ads), HN's valuation as a
stand-alone business should be negative, since it will lose money (hosting,
moderation and maintenance costs) as long as it keeps operating.

If there was a commercial competitor to HN, it would have to be significantly
better than HN to attract users away from HN. HN's biggest attraction is a
relatively small number of very knowledgeable and interesting users, and that
would be very difficult for any commercial competitor to duplicate. And
without such a user base, an HN competitor would also probably have a pretty
low valuation.

~~~
kilimchoi
HN doesn't make money right now but they can certainly do it if they start to
charge companies for making job posts. Currently, companies are posting under
a post called who's hiring regularly which will be a significant source of
revenue stream for HN. On top of that, there's a separate tab called jobs with
a fewer number of companies which HN can charge at higher price. That being
said, I think HN offers lots of values not just for average users like us but
also for the companies. This can translate into a huge valuation if it were a
startup.

