All good things must come to an end, and so does my participation on HN.
It’s been fun! I learned a lot, got to know a bunch of great people and have made new friends and found a business partner here. For over two years HN was the first site I checked in the morning, the last I would check before going to bed.
The downside for me is that I’m a person that is of an addictive nature and I can’t do things half, so either HN is going to continue to dominate my days from now until eternity or I quit. About a year ago I vowed that I’d quit HN on the day that I’d pass 50,000 karma, that should be enough for anybody and that point in time has come.
So, this is not me just taking a break from HN, and I’m leaving for the worst possible reason: HN is simply too good not to spend all day on it, definitely not because I think that HN is going to the dogs or because it’s ‘gotten more and more like reddit’. For me HN never was about the articles or the comments, it always was about the people.
Special thanks to everybody that was patient with me in light of extreme stubbornness and of course to PG for having me as a guest on his creation, which I’m sure will cause many more amazing things to happen than what has come to pass so far. YC and HN have literally transformed the start-up landscape and I have a feeling that that’s only just begun.
Parting Gifts:
(1) with the permission of Paul here are the texts of the start-up school videos that have been patiently trans-scribed by my better half over the last couple of months. It’s still a work in progress, not all videos have been done yet but here are the ones that are complete:
More will be added as the work progresses.
Transcribing these was (much) more work than we ever thought it would be, if you spot any errors then please let me know (jacques@mattheij.com), if you are one of the speakers and you would like to host the text yourself please feel free to copy the page, let me know and I’ll replace the text here with a link to your page (they are your words after all!).
We thought that having the transcripts would be a great complement to the videos. The plan is to complete the rest of the videos over the next few weeks, then to make good looking PDFs, one for each talk.
(2) Any HN starter-upper of the bootstrapping variety that thinks they could benefit from a boost in traffic is invited to send me a banner, a link text and a destination url. I can’t guarantee you any conversions or customers but I’ll do my best to promote your start-up to the visitors of my web properties.
(3) If anybody from HN every has a question that they think I might have the answer to feel free to email me, jacques@mattheij.com, today, two weeks from now or a year from now.
I will continue to update the Unofficial HN faq when prompted, simply send me an email and I’ll update the text.
Much good luck to all HN users, the ‘funded’, the ‘unfunded’ and those that are still sitting on the fence past present and future.
On a positive note, PG will have a few thousand pageviews less per day to contend with and HN will be that much more responsive ;)
Special thanks to: pg, edw519, patio11, grellas, david927, DanielBMarkham, mz,
jbooth, mahmud, jasonlbaptiste, markbao, vaksel, swombat, jrockway, robg, davidw,
raganwald, mechanical_fish (runner up for the best nick), dove, RiderOfGiraffes
(best nick on HN imo), nostrademons, cperciva, blasdel, nreece, ryanwagonner,
plinkplonk, jgrahamc, petercooper, mattmaroon, mixmax, epi0Bauqu, andreyf,
gojomo, wheels, ErrantX, btilly, wallflower, bemmu, phpnode, steveklabnik,
vivtek, tsycho, rdl, danilocampos, loewenskind, viraptor, arethuza,
dark_shikari, dschobel, staunch, petervandijck, eru, aaronbrethorst, drusenko,
rbanffy, amichail, stdcredzero, hugh3, daeken, danifong, bearwithclaws, frossie,
flooha, sleepingbot, quizbiz, solipsist tdavis, noonespecial, zackattack,
unalone, stavrosk, jacobaldridge, dhimes, jerome_etienne, jereomec, Locke1689,
pyre, bootload, stonemetal, electromagnetic, barrkel, dchest, paraschopra,
pclark and todayiamme.
No doubt I’ve forgotten a few people in that list, apologies, please don’t take it personal, it’s just that there are too many to remember off the cuff and that’s a pretty long list already.
I’ll continue writing start-up related stuff on this blog (such as the monthly ‘idea dump’) and you can follow me on twitter through http://twitter.com/jmattheij
Jacques Mattheij (jacquesm)