[capableweb]

A submission from 2011 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2841045) seems to give you some sort of proof, people talking about "Gotta love the HN format" and "http://quant.ly/newest says the latest 3 posts" so seems to have been something like HN at least.

In the submission there was a mention of "HN for business" as well (http://forlue.com), but that links to some ad-infested abomination now.