Ask HN: Any YC companies running on Drupal?

Keep in mind that peter's article was from 2006. Drupal has continued to grow and it provides a lot of out of the box functionality. I think there are a lot of alternatives as Vuong has mentioned, including doing it yourself. But why not use out of the box functionality and install modules that the community has already contributed? There are ways to extend existing functionality as well.

It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish too. I've helped customize Drupal for a lot of applications, such as using it as a data aggregation server thats paired with a mobile app, video broadcast platform and yes even a groupon-esque site as well.

If you dont mind sharing what you're trying to build, I think there are a lot of people here who can chime in on your architecture/approach.

Don't know about any YC but subhublite,acquia gardens etc do it by building a distribution(with features usually) and using aegir+ubercart for saas. Check drupal gardens, subhublite, officemedium, (some wedding website saas whose name i don't remember). Basically: Open Atrium + Aegir + Ubercart = Basecamp Clone

Check : http://drupal.org/node/993166 (Pagabuild Case Study)

Probably not.

I still don't think Drupal is a good idea for almost all startups. http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2006/12/09/3382/drupal...

An exception may be something like Groupon: something with a very simple, generic web presence. And even then.

I think most (PHP) web startups tend to use frameworks (CakePHP, Codeigniter, Zend etc.) rather than CMS. Believe me, the trouble of hacking up a CMS to do what you want is more than just build stuff from scratch with a framework.