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Comment by jcroberts | Hacker News Reader

It seems you misunderstood my statement. I never called your post irrelevant. In fact, it is relevant for this site. --I should have made it a bit more clear.

On this site, "hackers as founders" is a strongly expressed correlation, and hence, all of the wonderful startup, business and entrepreneur postings. None the less, the original definition of "hacker" was someone good at solving problems through programming computers. The term was later redefined as someone who breaks into computer systems, and redefined again as someone who breaks into computer systems for profit, or steals via computer systems.

If one did not know the "hackers as founders" idea/definition here on HN, then a post about "entrepreneurs" would seem out of place with any of the more common definitions.

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I'm actually reading "Hackers" (the Levy book) now, and I've spent a lot of time thinking/writing/educating about the term, so I dig what you're getting at. =)

And the "hackers as founders" thing is kinda what Y Combinator is all about, yes?

  > And the "hackers as founders" thing is kinda 
  > what Y Combinator is all about, yes?

The only person qualified to answer this question is Paul Graham himself. If you read his essays, as well as the various FAQ's and similar for both HN and YCombinator, you can see it in his own words.

After thinking about it for a bit, your article against people using of the term "entrepreneur" shows a lack of experience with "hackers" (as per it's original definition). The vast majority of the greatest hackers I've known absolutely suck at business, marketing, socializing and other important aspects of entrepreneurship. If you read up on Steve Wozniak or Robert Morris, you'll realize their success in business probably would not have happened without having someone else around willing to learn and do all the other stuff required by a successful venture. From what I've read of Paul Graham, including "On Lisp" and "ANSI Common Lisp," he seems to be a rare breed; good at tech and good at business. Most of his writing, HN and YCombinator all seems to emphasize and encourage people to be good at both. In essence, he promotes the idea of hackers as entrepreneurs.

There will always be those self-embracing the term "hacker" or the term "entrepreneur" who really are not what they claim to be, or do not meet the higher/highest end of the definitions. They are both terms of endearment and respect, but they are great things to aspire to be.

I get what you're saying about hackers, but I don't see why you'd necessarily correlate hackers with entrepreneurs. There's a very narrow overlap in that Venn diagram, precisely because hackers (orig. definition) don't do what they do to make money or build businesses. Hacker/founder/entrepreneurs are a rare enough breed.

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