Jeffrey Li

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@valenli__ touse

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@Konstantine @sequoia @ochonaut Amazing and insightful work Oliver!

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@ochonaut So cool and insightful!

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@Konstantine Amazing read!

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@johnrtian Awesome!

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@johnrtian @Railway Insane work John!

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@valenli__ I guess bro

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@Konstantine @sequoia @ochonaut Amazing work Oliver!

[Konstantine Buhler @Konstantine]

Should you chase hype or ignore it? The tech industry has been debating this for decades. So at @Sequoia, we dug into 20 years of hype data.

This summer, I worked with Sequoia intern @ochonaut to measure hype over the past 2 decades. The chart below ranks the most hyped topics on Hacker News for every year since 2007. Under each year sits the most valuable company founded that year.

Here are a few observations:
1/ The top company founded in a given year is rarely related to the hype of that period. Airbnb was founded in 2008, when the top topic was Google. Uber arrived in 2009, while the conversation revolved around low-level programming. Anthropic came in 2021, while the internet was consumed by crypto. Chasing hype rarely leads to enduring outcomes. The top companies of recent years have yet to be decided.

2/ New trends announce themselves five to six years early. LLMs first cracked the top 15 in 2016 and took until 2022 to hit #1. AI coding entered at #12 in 2021 and tops the list in 2026. Crypto entered in 2011 before 2017 and 2021 peaks. “New” trends don’t appear out of nowhere, and internet subcommunities are often the first to know where the puck is headed.

3/ Long-term “hype” is a durable signal. The “Musk-Verse” has been a top 15 topic for every one of the past 14 years. Sustained attention on the internet is rare and tends to mark something real.

Next up, we want to run the same analysis with sources like X and LinkedIn. If that's of interest, give us some encouragement and we'll share the results.

[Delta @DeltaCommunityX]

🚨 Headed to ICML 2026?

We made a conference-wide Slack with channels for people to find afterparties, meet other attendees, and more!

https://t.co/rCTrHWpnAf

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@DeltaInstitutes Outstanding!

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@DeltaInstitutes @PoeticHQ Amazing!

[Jeffrey Li @jeffliyh]

@DeltaInstitutes @trajectorylabs Amazing work, congrats!