Edit: Apologies if this came off as accusatory. Was trying to make the point that they don't have control of the media, but instead are just flawless in their use of it.

The point is not that they have direct control over YC or HN, it's that they have massive indirect control over the organization and have done a wizard's job of making themselves untouchable in the media.

Some context: I'm a former (early) YC founder, and during my batch the YC team recommended that we spend time with the HN team. The HN team gave us edits on our posts, recommended the best times of day to submit, emailed us when stories about our companies hit the front page, and explained how the ranking algorithms worked (and thus we learned how to game them). And we are not the most valuable YC company ever -- so it's possible more was done for Stripe.

It's not direct influence, but rather indirect impact. So again I ask -- Did Patrick request that you write this post?