The archive · Content & Film · Product decision · 2014
ndarville's 'List of Web Business Models' gist makes a sprawling HN thread browsable
One developer restructures a tangled HN thread into a Markdown taxonomy where every web business model is one row with a named example company.
ndarville
What it had to solve
A Hacker News thread (item 4924647) had collected a compiled list of web business models, but the GitHub user ndarville found the original link very hard to browse — useful knowledge buried in noisy discussion. So he made a simple version in Markdown instead.
How it works
In July 2014 the GitHub user ndarville kept meeting a Hacker News thread (item 4924647) that compiled a long list of web business models. The knowledge was worth sharing, but the original link was, in his words, very hard to browse — dozens of commenters had piled additions and objections onto one page. Rather than argue about the content, he solved the format: 'I made a simple version in Markdown instead.'
The design choice was to make one line carry one idea. Every business model became a row in a table — Display ads: Yahoo!, Search ads: Google, Flash sales: Gilt Groupe, P2P lending: Lending Club, and so on — grouped under ten headings from Advertising and Commerce to Mobile, Gaming and, later, Open Source. Each row paired the model with an example company, so a reader saw not just that a model existed but what it looked like in the wild. A second file repeated the taxonomy as monospace plain text with aligned columns, for anyone who wanted the list in a code comment or README.
The reception was big and mixed. The gist drew 346 points and 70 comments on Hacker News, and the comment stream stayed alive for years: people nominated missing models — IaaS, crowdfunding, video ads, price comparison — and missing examples such as GitHub, Magento and Valve's Dota 2 cosmetics. Some critics insisted the list catalogued revenue models rather than full business models; the author, who had made it in spare time, answered that he would rather update it ad hoc than moderate an open repository of 'entitled brats'.
By the time the page was fetched in 2026 it carried 1,894 stars and 240 forks, and one 2016 commenter said he had turned the taxonomy into a book and a free 10-part email course covering 22 online business models. A single restructured gist had become the community's default answer to 'how do web businesses make money?'
Why it lands
- One model per row with a named example company turns a taxonomy into a checklist a founder can actually scan for their own situation.
- Two output formats — browsable tables and monospace plain text with aligned columns — served both reading on screen and copying into other documents.
- Staying a gist instead of a repo kept maintenance a one-person, occasional job, which is why the list could survive years of traffic without a maintainer burnout.
- Publishing it on the very site where the conversation lived made the artifact trivial to link, star and fork, so it became the canonical pointer instead of the thread.
What it did
The gist drew 346 points and 70 comments on Hacker News and now carries 1,894 stars and 240 forks. Readers kept adding examples for years — GitHub, Valve's Dota 2 cosmetics, jOOQ, Magento — and one later commenter said the taxonomy had become the basis of a book and a free 10-part email course on online business models.
What you can take
Community knowledge buried in a thread becomes useful when someone reformats it around one unit — model plus named example — and ships it as a linkable artifact; format can be the whole creative act.
Since then
The gist kept collecting examples for years after its July 2014 debut — GitHub, Valve's Dota 2 cosmetics, Magento, jOOQ and others arrived via comments — and the author kept updating it ad hoc, pointing further suggestions to the Hacker News thread in a 2016 comment. One April 2016 commenter said he had built a book and a free 10-part email course around 22 online business models drawn from the list. As of the 2026 fetch the gist shows 1,894 stars and 240 forks, making it a durable, still-linkable reference for the question of how web businesses make money.
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