It’s content marketing for Y Combinator itself, like a blog on steroids. Y Combinator wants to market to the following groups:

- startup founders, that could apply to YC

- investors, that could invest in YC companies

- potential customers for YC companies

- potential employees for YC companies

HN brings all of these people into a YC controlled community, and gets them thinking about YC frequently. It’s outstanding marketing, and like all great content marketing, it also provides value to the people being marketed to.

Of course. Remember that Dropbox started here [0]. It inspires lots of people to apply to YC. YC founders participate in these forums. It raises everyone's value in general. HN members often are the early adopters on many YC products, giving important feedback (for free) to these companies.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

> This is one of the few places where a tech outsider can be exposed to some of the topics that are on the minds of insiders. The caveat is that criticism of any of the conceptual bodies orbiting the starry notion of "tech startup" (social ramifications, diversity and discrimination, wealth and income, etc.) are heavily frowned upon. Now, are mods going through and sweeping away every comment that proclaims, "Tech bad."? (Mostly) no. But no one wants to bite the hand that feeds it, particularly when so many have usernames easily tied to their public personas. So it's disappointing but not surprising to see people hostile to or tip-toeing around said criticism.

> In any case, the basic dynamic is interesting: the less you pay for things directly, the more power you give up to those who do. The abstraction is largely symbolic for ads (consumers pay advertisers in higher product costs), but apparently where and when money exchanges hands matters to who ultimately has influence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22513699

To change your behaviour to look more favourably on Ycombinator startups. (/s?)

Unless they're just losing money on it.

An apartment building I once lived in had free candy in the lobby sometimes. I rather doubt it was driven by any measurable profits for them by doing it.

YCombinator companies advertise here for jobs?