Retrospective: Tech Projects Initially Dismissed by Hacker News That Became Major Successes
By
ohong
3mo ago· 5 min readenInsight
100/100
Golden Brown
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Summary
This article presents a retrospective analysis of successful tech projects that were initially dismissed or underestimated by the Hacker News community. It examines several major tech launches including Dropbox (2007), GitHub (2008), Bitcoin (2009), and DuckDuckGo (2009), highlighting how these projects were met with skepticism or indifference on Hacker News despite later achieving massive success. The article explores the pattern of community skepticism toward innovative ideas and how initial negative reactions often fail to predict eventual impact and adoption.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledThe most famous bad take in HN history — the 'I could build this myself with existing unix tools' archetype.
GitHub was perceived as 'just a git host' — the social layer and the network effects were invisible.
The entire thread had just 3 comments and 5 upvotes. Three comments. For what would become a $2 trillion asset class.
A two-decade retrospective of launches Hacker News dismissed. And what happened next.
A two-decade retrospective of launches Hacker News dismissed. And what happened next.
