It seems from the post that the primary reason you got into YC the second time around was because Paul recognized your username. Obviously there were other reasons involved, which PG has stated above. However, the overall feel is that getting into YC has a lot to do with PG's initial impression of who you are and how active you are on hacker news than the actual idea itself, considering that you said the idea remained unchanged, it was just the pitch that was different.
Basically, I feel like I have to contribute something worthy on this site now in order to be considered for YC. While I feel that being an active community member is important, I don't think it should be given the weight that it seems to carry for YC applications.
That's not true. Decisions about who to interview depend on three equal votes-- mine, Robert's, and Trevor's-- and Robert and Trevor don't read HN enough to know who's who. At best, making thoughtful comments on HN will give you an edge in borderline cases.
The best thing you can do is what Scott said to do in the application: get to work. Then you'll sound in your application like you know what you're talking about, because you will.
Do not do this. I tried this route and still got rejected. All it resulted in was me wasting time trying to find articles to submit and/or comment on. Better to just work on your idea and assume you'll get rejected either way.
Absolutely do not waste time in order to support your YC application. Work on your startup instead.
I think in a microcosm, 'username' is just shorthand for how active and aware you are in the startup community as a whole. It's the same as everything else, if other people in the industry remember you, whether from a mixer you attended, or an article you published or what have you, you are much more likely to have an 'in' with them. Is it a means to an end? No, but it is a useful and helpful artifact of being interested and active in the field you want to go into.
Geez, I can't imagine a worse way for an aspiring achiever start any sentence. Get one thing straight: you don't have to do anything. The prizes (whatever they are) go to those with positive mental attitude and fierce determination. I imagine that for yc, like most other things worth doing, that's half the battle.
FWIW, this may be the best community on the internet for passionate hackers. If you feel like you have to contribute, please don't. If, OTOH, you want to be a part of something that can help you (and others) in ways you can't even imagine right now, welcome aboard.
None of the founders of Bump had a Hacker News account before applying. When YC started, I didn't get the feeling that people knew each other from HN. The last class had >50 founders, only a few of which I see post on HN.
If you run a startup, even a 'exchange goods and services with customers' lifestyle company like I have that ignores investors completely, you will need to market yourself. If your customers are other startups, news.ycombinator.com is an excellent place to market yourself.
Yes, writing about your activities is marketing yourself. Until you become much bigger than I am, a 'personal relationship' with your customers is a huge part of marketing.
Hah. I was going to link to some old twitter threads, but it seems 'older tweets are not available'... I search for my company name on twitter quite a lot, and help people who are complaining. I'm remembering a particularly amusing moment when one of my Chinese customers was complaining (in Chinese) of a down VPS. I used the google translate tool to figure out what they were complaining about, then I helped them with the problem. The customer was rather shocked that I was able to puzzle out the problem from the Chinese description.
One of the keys to marketing, though, is to not spend too much time on any one prospect until you know they are interested. It sounds like you feel the need to put a lot of effort into marketing yourself to PG before he has shown much interest. In the example above, because the conversation was on twitter, I was not only helping one customer, I was telling the world that I'm the sort of guy who is willing and able to help out my customers.
If your customers are on news.ycombinator.com (or if you are primarily marketing your startup to investors rather than to customers, which I personally think is bad) then yeah, put effort into building your image here. Otherwise, it probably is not worth the effort, unless you really enjoy it.
Uh, that's the other thing. Yeah, you could say that we are all building images of ourselves. But you know? people are pretty good at sniffing out fakes. If you want your image to feel genuine, you need it to be genuine.
You don't. Consider this: In W07, there were ~12 teams accepted IIRC. We didn't have videos or HN.
There are now > 20 teams selected. Without being active on HN, you still have the same chance as before, but those that are posting intelligently to HN are getting a boost.
From what I can infer, PG is much more interested in the person/team than the idea; the implementation is the hard part. Given that PG has implied in the past that Hacker News was written to help YC, this doesn't seem an unreasonable approach since they're honest about the matter.
Basically, I feel like I have to contribute something worthy on this site now in order to be considered for YC. While I feel that being an active community member is important, I don't think it should be given the weight that it seems to carry for YC applications.