I'm not exaggerating when I say that HN changed my life. When I first started using the site almost 15yrs ago I was a junior recruiter barely making ends meet. I learned a huge amount about the tech startup world through HN and when I found out there was a small HN meetup in London (where I worked), I jumped at the chance to check it out and ended up attending the meet-up every month.

I quickly became friends with the organiser of the meetup (Dmitri) and started helping him out. Together over the next 10 years we turned the meetup into the largest tech meetup in Europe with nearly 10k members and an average attendance of 500 people (max capacity for our venue). I ended up hosting the meetup and through that event (plus HN itself) my career took off. I've worked with multiple YC companies and have launched various products and businesses leveraging the network I created through HN. Dmitri and his family are still very close friends and honestly, it really is all thanks to HN.