As part of his departure from day-to-day operations at Y Combinator, Paul Graham announced today that he’s also handing over the reins of Hacker News, the technology and entrepreneurship-focused social news website that he built and has run through YC since 2007.
In a simple and straightforward blog post, Graham announced that YC outreach director Kat Manalac and YC partner Garry Tan will be taking over as the “voice of YC on HN,” responding to all YC-related inquiries on the site. Additionally, Daniel Gackle has joined YC full-time to handle moderation of the YC community, YC partner Kevin Hale will be in charge of the site’s web and mobile design, and software developer Nick Sivo will continue to handle the site’s code.
In his blog post, Graham said he will still drop in to Hacker News from time to time, just not as much as he used to: “I’ll still be around as a user, but less frequently than when I felt I had to check the site every hour or so to make sure nothing had broken.”
Hacker News has had a big impact on the tech and programming community over the last 7 years — it’s arguably grown to be more influential to a wider audience than Y Combinator’s core startup accelerator itself. It will be interesting to see what the coming years bring for both HN and YC as they each move into their next chapters of growth, with “PG” taking a step back.
For an in-depth look at Hacker News and its rise, read Leena Rao’s retrospective “The Evolution Of Hacker News.”