It's a hiring advantage for YC startups, as well it's publicity for YC in general, putting the YC brand in front of people who apply to accelerators. Why do I know a lot about YC? Because I read hacker news and there's a lot of stories here about YC and YC companies. What do I know about their competitors? Almost nothing. So it's a huge advantage.
It is possibly one of the most diversified tech communities on the planet. As such it attracts talent. At the end, talent is your most valuable raw material as an accelerator/startup.
HN pulls techies/hackers like a magnet. In a way, it was the internet exposure to YC/HN/pg's essays that brought me into the startup world. And in a way, it was always my aspiration to go to Mountain View and talk to those people that gave me that exposure.
Not snark, not sarcasm, not nitpicking, actual genuine curiosity (because that'd be really encouraging if it were true!).....How do you know how diverse this community is?
Of course I would love to see HN data, but I believe that there is a fair amount of users that are not located anywhere near Silicon Valley.
An indicator of this would be the fact that many people I know from the EU startup scene have an HN account. Different age group, background, and profession. Of course, the sample size is not that large here.
> Only YC companies are allowed to post jobs on HN.
That's factually incorrect. Only YC companies are allowed to post job ads at any time and as separate threads. But once per month any company can post job ads on HN, the 'who is hiring' threads on the first of the month.
Only YC companies are available on the "jobs" tab at the top of this, and every, HN page. Only YC companies can be the original post, instead of a comment. YC job postings are the only links that are not subject to comments/criticism.
The original point is that HN serves a very useful purpose for YC companies that it doesn't serve for non-YC companies.
