Hacker News is a discussion board geared towards people involved with startups. Most submissions to Hacker News are either business or technical articles, but the site isn't limited to any specific type of content. Users of the site are the ones who decide which content should rise to the top, by voting on interesting links. Hacker News, previously known as "Startup News", is hosted by Y Combinator, a startup incubator.

Hacker News was launched on February 19, 2007, but at that time it was known as "Startup News." The site was started by the folks at Y Combinator. Shortly after launch, the site received 1,600 unique visitors per weekday http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html. Since then, the site has grown to receive over 30,000 unique visitors per weekday http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html.

Hacker News encourages lots of discussion in the comments provided alongside each link submitted. Some users post comments that add information that the article failed to include, while others provide links to other relevant content. Comments can be up-voted in order to move the most useful or most agreed upon comments up to the top of the page. Users may not down-vote comments until they reach a certain karma level, as calculated by the user's popularity of submissions and comments.