Hm, you've just given me an idea: A HN based traffic exchange, where HN members with large websites would donate excess inventory to pull new starter-uppers off the ground.
Just like attempting to formalize it may be a mistake, thinking HN might be too big is an equally limiting mistake. Ideally the pay-it-forward concept would encompass every individual globally and as such it has no upper limit.
When in doubt, just concentrate on what you can do :)
> jacquesm posts 'I'll promote one startup on launch day that helps another HNer in a meaningful way.'
I've already been doing that for a while, I was just wondering if it might be useful to give that some bigger shoes.
I'm sure that any of the sites here that are large enough to be selling ads would have some unsold inventory or inventory that they could miss without any pain whatsoever.
If you have to set that up on a per-instance basis it is a lot of work (it is for me) so that might take the sting out of it and make it more practical.
No ... companies that have merit tend to get the attention they deserve. If not immediately, eventually. As for the community, anybody who contributes is much more likely to get attention in the long-run.
Also, what is the "excess inventory" that you are referring to?
A submission to hacker news is a pitch to the community ... the community will vote up anything that has merit ... that was the point of the community in the first place!
Would anyone actually use this,, and do people actually have excess inventory? I have various bits of code that together would go most of the way to building this.
(Specifically I have a Python/AppEngine link exchange app that I never launched, as well as a Java/AppEngine context sensitive ad-serving engine with clickthough tracking & optimization etc that I built for fun)
Does that have merit?