Dear Professor

Some people were questioning if these emails were real ("who tells their professor they're slacking?"). I have always chosen to communicate in an open and honest way.

I'm particularly happy that I was able to dig up this email because it paints a great picture of our early hustle. We would find hackathon events any way we could and RSVP right away. Much to our surprise, not every hackathon has a place to stay overnight, so we often ended up crashing on our friend's couches. In one specific case I remember pushing 8 chairs together to form a bed.

At the first hackathon we released Hacker League at, our friend challenged us to sign up 10 events.

When I presented the company to this class I remember ending the presentation with "This is a real company, and we've run 13 events to date." The professor shouted that that was "a success" and that I should be very proud. Since then we've powered hundreds of events.

At the time it wasn't clear if we were developing an app for hackers, people who were interested in hackathons, organizers, or just anybody in tech. We weren't really sure what we were building, just that we wanted it for ourselves.

I think a key part of our success was determining a market and sticking with it (thanks professor). At some point we declared Hacker League as "a platform for hackathons" and although the site was used by everybody in attendance, the focus was on organizers. If the organizers used it, so would the attendees.

A huge benefit of the hackathon format that for every hackathon we attended, there were a few people in the audience who were either organizers or thinking about organizing an event. This helped the site go viral within the hackathon community.

You also might remember me from Mote.io, an app I launched a few months ago on HN. http://mote.io

The vast majority of people who drop out of college (or let their grades slip) to launch startups end up in failure, financial hardship, and misery. You should not plan your life based on 5-sigma outliers.

The Internet is full of pro-startup propaganda and terrible advice. Move fast and ruin your life. It's bullshit.

No one is saying, "build your career, work hard and learn a lot, become really good at things, and get rich slowly." (In part, that's because venture capitalists hate the idea of a 15-50% per year growth company.) Instead, it's the "you could be a winner!" Tappy Tibbons nonsense.

Normally, this would just be a new generation of the same damn fraud that has always existed. However, given the perverted culture of age discrimination (chickenhawking) in the contemporary Valley it has become apparent that a whole culture has fallen for this "get rich quick, or you're a loser" nonsense and the massive wad of impractical, life-wrecking advice that comes with it.