I was thinking about the reasons this article is HN's first page.
When the article is not about technology or startups, is it because the site is well executed or because the subject is interesting? Probably both.
I would like to point another reason: the Gracie jiu-jitsu empire is an example of well executed and successful start up.
Their marketing techniques are remarkable. When one of the Gracie brothers opened his school in my city, he offered a considerable quantity of money to any local fighter that won him. Then, he beat the first guy that accepted pretty bad, not serious injured but it was not nice. Result: no more challenges, brand exposure, successful marketing.
I couldn't read the article at all -- there was a big blue "title page" that I couldn't get to go away by scrolling down or clicking anywhere.
It got better when I resized the page, though only somewhat -- some page widths did "nice" things (like having a simple header at the top), but others gave the awful expanding blue header thing. With that header I'd scroll down to get to the content, then I'd have to scroll back up again to get to the content that I'd scrolled past :-/
