Nothing fundamentally has changed about HN as Y Combinator has become more successful over time. Your premise pretends that both HN's long-term and initial success rests on the present riches of Y Combinator - that's false.
HN runs on one server and is moderated by just a couple of people typically. It is in fact the definition of a mom & pop operation. It does not have a zillion dollar budget, either for operations or promoting itself. It doesn't need it, the value proposition is the content, community and standards.
I can semi-trivially set up an HN clone for any given industry or concept. It'll be up to me to promote it and garner attention to it, however the point is that it's extremely inexpensive and easy (few regulations, hurdles, compliance issues, etc) to open up that type of expression platform. That's what the parent is referring to.
It's not about who the mom is, or whether she is a billionaire. HN is read mostly by tech workers, which is probably not more than 5% of US population and probably less than 1% of internet users. These numbers are out of my ass, but is there any indication that HN is mainstream media? HN is a niche media like my sister's blog.
I think 1% of the USA is generous. We're talking about mostly programmers and software engineers here. I doubt the level 2 tech support at Comcast is reading HN, much less any significant percentage all IT workers.
FWIW I'm closer to the L2 Comcast tech than programmer and I was introduced to HN by my dad, a DBA. I thought HN was for the intellectually curoius, not just the coders and programmers of the Valley?
I was homeless for nearly 6 years and an active participant. I'm also not a programmer, though I have a Certificate in GIS and, these, days, make part of my money as a "webmaster."
There are a lot of IT people here. This, unfortunately, sometimes convinces some individuals that that's all there is here, which is an inaccurate assumption.
