20 YEARS OF HACKER NEWS ARCHIVES · 2007–2026

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12
Startup Sagas

Indispensable Masterclasses

Tenured founders and engineers reflect on their defining highs and devastating lows.

12 Startup Life Sagas

Follow iconic products across their entire lifecycle—from the euphoric launch to scaling battles, acquisitions, or postmortems.

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2009 – 2021 30 milestones

RethinkDB

The open-source distributed JSON database that developers loved, but businesses wouldn't buy.

💡 Developer admiration and GitHub stars do not equal market viability. Solve a hair-on-fire business need before perfecting architecture.
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2012 – 2025 30 milestones

Pebble

The Kickstarter smartwatch pioneer that challenged giants, got acquired, and rose from the dead.

💡 Hardware is hard, but platform gatekeepers are harder. Community love keeps software alive even after the company fades.
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2010 – 2025 30 milestones

Heroku

The cloud king that invented modern developer experience, lost its soul, and taught a generation of self-hosters.

💡 Developer trust is built on predictability and simplicity. When cloud pricing skyrockets, developers return to bare metal.
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2011 – 2025 30 milestones

Trello

From Fog Creek internal side experiment to 10M users, viral Kanban adoption, and a $425M acquisition.

💡 Obsessive UX simplicity, instant responsiveness, and zero learning curve can make a simple visual board dominate work management.
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2011 – 2022 30 milestones

DuckDuckGo

The bootstrapped privacy search engine that took on Google from a suburban basement and built a $100M+ business.

💡 Taking a principled contrarian stance against industry monopolies attracts a fiercely loyal community.
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2017 – 2024 9 milestones

Indie Hackers

The transparent community that sparked the global Build-in-Public revolution and got acquired by Stripe.

💡 Honest numbers, authentic interviews, and community-first distribution are stronger moats than proprietary tech.
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2011 – 2017 24 milestones

Parse

The backend-as-a-service acquired by Facebook for $85M, suddenly shut down, and revived by open source.

💡 Never tie your core infrastructure to a proprietary cloud service whose parent company can pull the plug overnight.
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2011 – 2024 18 milestones

Dark Sky

The hyperlocal weather forecasting API indie devs relied on, until Apple bought and closed it.

💡 Bootstrapping an exceptional consumer & API product makes you an acquisition target, but sunsetting developer APIs leaves a void.
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