No one at YC thinks of HN that way. I certainly don't. If we did, we'd run HN very differently.

You're also wrong about why HN exists. pg created it for a bunch of reasons. Some had nothing at all to do with YC (e.g. wanting interesting things to read, once Reddit stopped being that for him; and wanting to make a web app in Arc) and others did. All of those reasons are still alive today, so your interpretation is much too reductionist.

It's true there are job ads for YC startups, and Launch HN threads for YC startups get placed on the front page (this is all in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). I'd like to hear what you think we should do instead. Surely you don't think HN should give nothing back to YC in exchange for funding it?

I’m not saying don’t do it. I think you’re doing great. HN is clearly a hugely successful content marketing project regardless of how the origin story is ret-conned.

You’ve got a passionate community of rich/technically skilled people who claim to hate ads falling over themselves to explain why this site is somehow different.

Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s more the cognitive dissonance of the commenters here who proudly announce, “I never see any ads” and “ads have no effect on me” that I find funny.