 | |
Type of site | Technology, Hacker culture |
|---|---|
| Founder | David Smooke |
| URL | hackernoon |
| Launched | 2016 |
| Current status | Active |
HackerNoon is a community-driven online publishing platform based in Edwards, Colorado. Founded in 2016 by David Smooke, it operates an open library of user-submitted articles covering software development, blockchain, and artificial intelligence.
HackerNoon was founded in January 2016 by David Smooke as a Medium-based blog titled Hacker Daily before rebranding to its current name. [1] [2] By 2017, it had reached approximately one million monthly readers on Medium. Later, HackerNoon became the official media partner for the SXSW Hackathon. [3]
Following disagreements with Medium's paywall model, HackerNoon chose to build its own publishing infrastructure. [4] In early 2019, HackerNoon raised US$1.07 million from about 1,200 backers through a Regulation Crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine. [5] The funding supported development of a proprietary content management system, and HackerNoon 2.0 launched in July 2019 with support from a US$100,000 Google cloud-hosting grant. In 2020, HackerNoon received a US$1 million investment from micropayments firm Coil at a pre-money valuation of US$11.5 million. In 2023, it raised an additional US$250,000 led by Forward Research at an estimated valuation of US$50 million. [6]
HackerNoon operates on a community-driven model, publishing work from more than 50,000 contributing writers rather than maintaining a large full-time staff. As of 2025, the platform reported reviewing over 5,000 submissions per month. Its editorial process combines human review with automated tools, including a 2025 partnership with GPTZero to identify AI-generated content. [7]
HackerNoon runs on a proprietary technology stack built with Next.js and Google Firebase. After migrating from Medium in 2019, the platform was designed to avoid pop-ups and provide analytics dashboards for contributors. It also adopted decentralized storage protocols to archive its published articles. [8]
HackerNoon covers a range of topics including software development, startups, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, and hacker culture. It serves as a platform for industry professionals and tech enthusiasts to publish technical articles, insights, and opinion pieces. [9] [10] The platform does not use paywalls and generates revenue primarily through sponsorships and native brand partnerships. Writers retain copyright to their work under a non-exclusive license.