HackerNoon
HackerNoon
HackerNoon is an American online publishing platform founded by David Smooke in 2016. Content submitted to the platform is reviewed by HackerNoon's Editors before publication; but is otherwise entirely community-driven, in that Hacker Noon publishes stories sent in by tech industry insiders from all over the world [27]. Smooke runs the platform with former education entrepreneur and partner, Linh Dao Smooke[28], who has said Hacker Noon's network of over 12,000 contributors, general technologists/Startup people, and Cryptocurrency enthusiasts"[30].
- History
Hacker Noon was founded by David Smooke and first kicked off on Medium in January 2016 as the "Hacker Daily,” where they amassed over 450k followers. In April 2016, it went live on the domain "hackernoon.com".[1]
In 2017, a Hacker Noon data journalism story, “More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked" by data scientist Jeff Kao garnered coverage from Boing Boing, Forbes, Fortune, Stanford University, Techmeme, Buzzfeed, and other top tech sites. Actor and Activist Alyssa Milano used it as evidence for why FCC Chairman Ajit Pai should not repeal Net neutrality*.*
In 2019, Hacker Noon's founders decided to remove Medium as their content management system, citing "general sentiment around publishers getting “burnt” by the platform and saying they lacked general control over Content such as Headline, Advertising and URL reroutes"[31].
In a podcast interview in March 2019, Smooke said "Medium offered to buy out Hacker Noon for a low sum, less than a Medium marketing professional makes in a year.
Hacker Noon chose to run a crowdfunding campaign instead, ultimately raising $1.07 million from 1,200 people"[32].
The independent online publishing platform Hacker Noon launched after officially migrating from Medium's software in mid-2019 was made possible by $1.07 million raised via equity crowdfunding[47].
As of December 2019, Hacker Noon had over 10,000 contributing writers and 4 million monthly readers, according to its CEO.
1.1. Funding
In early-2019, Hacker Noon raised the U.S. $1.07 million via an Equity crowdfunding campaign from 1,198 shareholders, including investment from Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian and Initialized Capital Partner Tan Gary and Evan J. Zimmerman at Jovono. Approximately 85% of shareholders came from website's readership. This expanded the team's software development, content production and editorial resources, making it possible to make a new publishing platform, dubbed as "Hacker Noon 2.0".
In May 2020, Hacker Noon entered into a $1 million partnership with Coil, a San Francisco-based startup designed to help creators monetize online content[36].
The Greater Colorado Venture Fund then invested $350,000, following a seed round in which the company was valued at $11.5 million[37] in October 2020, a Ukrainian venture capital firm called Genesis Investments invested a further $150,000 in Hacker Noon[38][37].
1.2. Acquisitions
- Visions and Practices
New Revenue Initiatives
Following the $1 million investment from former Ripple CTO’s firm, Coil, Hacker Noon CEO David Smooke said in an interview with CoinDesk: “Avoiding something like a Paywall with a Microtransaction is extremely valuable”. In another interview with CoinTelegraph, Smooke said “We want to become the best place for tech professionals to read, write and publish. To date, we’ve provided editorial resources, validation, and Distribution. Now with this Strategic partnership, Hacker Noon will experiment with Streaming Micropayment to writers based on how much time users spend reading,” emphasizing again that 'the reading experience will remain exactly the same, with no pop-ups or Paywall'[43].
Hacker Noon's revenue model is an example of a new revenue initiative in response to the ethical implications of paywalls in online publishing in that it ,,,, ["And that creates the incentive of just more time reading, more impression, no click-through, no tracking, a really simple ad that we sell directly to companies. And so that’s the stance we’ve taken on sponsorships and ads. And then we want to absorb companies, corporate blogs and tech releases and be a trusted source where they can distribute their news. So, that’s a little more of the direction we’re headed in terms of how we work with tech companies."[44]
- Platform and Software
When Hacker Noon launched their independent Publishing platform in mid-2019, CEO David Smooke acknowledged the Migration meant his Startup had “moved from being just a Publishing company to also becoming a Software company”[48].
A year later, Hacker Noon added Website monetization standards following a partnership with Coil, who provide software for Streaming Micropayment in web browsers using the proposed open web standard known as Web monetization to stream Micropayment to online Content creation in real-time[34]. Coil has also invested in other "community content destinations, like Imgur"[34].
- The Noonies Awards
On 16 July 2019, Hacker Noon launched its annual Technology industry awards event, The Noonies.[51] The online awards event aims to draw attention to underrepresented corners of the internet[52][53], as well as the projects and people working in the Technology industry, and is community-driven, with award winners being decided entirely by users’ votes. 2019 Noonies Award titles included Blockchain of the Year, Best AMA, Most Exciting Startup, and Social network of the Year[51]. The 2020 Noonies Awards was sponsored by Grant for the Web[55] drove ten times the traffic as the the previous year, according to Hacker Noon's CEO[52]. Past winners Award Winners include "World's Most Productive Remote ( Telecommuting) Team", won by GitLab and "Trending Tech Product of the Year", won Uniris, a French Blockchain-Biometrics identification startup[57].
"The Noonies are the Hacker Noon awards.
Described as a “…dundies – but for technology”, the Noonies aim to reward the underrepresented corners of the internet."[53]