> Do employees vastly outnumber founders on Hacker News?

That's just globally true. For all I know, bots may outnumber both of those groups as well.

> And if so, could that explain some of the negativity towards speculative and crazy ideas?

Do you have specific examples in mind? I can't conjure links and am just operating from memory, but I recall reading about lot of ideas that are less speculative/crazy and more nonsense that feels out of touch with what actual humans would want or need.

My impression is that founders have been a small minority of HN’ers since I found it.

While founders are probably more concentrated on HN than elsewhere, that’s a very low bar.

I guess it all depends on specific examples, your question is so broad that seems almost unserious. The "speculative and crazy ideas" is unqualified, so there's a very strong possibility that (1) they're simply unhinged or idiotic or (2) they don't make sufficient business sense to be supported by anyone, regardless of whether those people are "founders" (whatever that means) or employees.

It's also a matter of statistics at play; HN is a social media platform - as opposed to a founders-only platform, and employees make for a significantly larger pool. It would make sense to see that kind of difference in numbers.

No, I don’t think that’s important. “Founders” are people who landed a scrap of capital from an exit or two by chance — they are not “speculative” or prone to “crazy ideas”. If anything unites them, it would be a general preference for risk. Oh and greed and pride, of course.

So: thankfully, yes.

Yes, and inevitably so as the site has grown.

obviously