21 in 21: Linn Bieske on Hack-Nation and Building Global AI Communities

Lynn, welcome to the 21 and 21 show. Thank you, Haley. Thank you so much for having me. It's a lovely day.

I'm super excited. I'm super excited, too, because we have something fun that we have been planning, and now we get to tell everybody all about it. That's awesome. What's the magic date?

Well, but as I know, there is a hackathon called Hack Nation that's a quarterly event, and the next one's happening on April 25th. And Spiral is going to be sponsors, and we're going to sponsor a really cool challenge. So we're going to talk all about it today. But before we get into the hackathon, I'd love if you could just maybe give our listeners a little bit of information on who you are, what your background is, how you got into this kind of crazy AI, Silicon Valley tech world.

Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, if you haven't signed up April 25th, and by Friday, we close the applications. Already 5,000 people applied, so it's going to be a big event and we have 12 different hubs and I'm so excited that we're going to be here in the Presidio as well. So super excited to partner with Spiral, super excited to be here and curious what everybody's going to build.

and uh yeah to introduce myself i'm i'm glenn based here in mountainview so during the day i'm a product manager for ai research and ai foundation so get to work on i get to work on you know all the fun stuff in the ai place find research portfolios um move our research forward and then during the night i always think of hey how can i empower others how can i build community how can I create spaces that everybody in the world can be an AI researcher, an AI entrepreneur, and an innovator.

And that's how all Ignatian came about. I'm originally German, grew up in a mountainous area. So also the mountains in the background here next to the Golden Gate Bridge, I love it. Yeah, it's very much like home.

Grew up with three passions, I would say. I was really into physics so I was a nerd kid I really loved physics but at the same time I loved skiing and was on my state ski team so they turned me into an athlete and then was a dancer and so I had these three passions and they then inspired my path to yes on the one hand dive into computer science field and study computer science at MIT but also on the other hand you know go on the scientist path and be actually trained as a material scientist too so I have have do a background and just love experimenting well you picked I mean it makes sense you like physics and then you also like skiing and dancing right things that very much have a lot of physics the only problem is gravity right yes sure yeah that's true maybe make the challenge even more strong well you do a lot and yes you have a full-time job busy and then you are helping facilitate these quarterly hackathons, also very busy.

And so that's crazy that you've already had 5,000 applicants for HackNation. Can you maybe just tell people a little bit more about HackNation, kind of why they would maybe be interested in flying, what to expect, and also how you have so successfully reached 5,000 people? Yeah. So what's the story?

Where is this all coming from? Where's the energy coming from, right? Where's the energy coming from? So we launched it a year go back on MIT's campus.

And we were realizing, A, we had so many ideas and so many ideas. And we were thinking, if we just invite, you know, if you invite 10 friends, then instead of building one idea, you might be able to build five. But OK, cool. If we invite 50 friends, maybe you can build 10 ideas.

If you invite 100, you can build even more. And so we thought at one point, if we just host a competition where we define the problem spaces. So based on our previous industry experience, knowing what are the white spaces we actually can innovate and marrying it with the purpose and the big thinking you'll learn at MIT where it's like, hey, really try to do something meaningful, try to do something meaningful, but not only for a particular problem, but also by taking a community along.

And so we had, I would say, the stupid idea to think of, cool, let's just organize a hackathon in two weeks from now. So we have 10 days of planning timeline. We invited speakers. We messaged our friends on WhatsApp and just asked them to spread the word.

And within 10 days, 850 people across 30 different countries signed up. And we were absolutely overwhelmed. We were like, oh my God, we don't have enough jury members. We don't have enough space.

Do we have enough prices? But I was so excited because I felt like, awesome, we can just bring so many projects to life. and so that I would say was the first was like the first seed of really seeding the format testing the format and honestly seeing how much you can do with an awesome team you know like five five five empty students having a crazy idea and just turning it into reality and then because it reached 30 countries so quickly we thought like wow this is really a competition across different nationalities.

So we called it Hack Nation. And by now it actually spans more than 70 countries. That's so cool. Yeah, I mean, we actually had a bunch of students here yesterday, mainly like MBA students from the UC program.

And I was talking to them about how like popular hackathons are with university students. Is that something that like you've maybe noticed a trend like because of AI or maybe because like the job scope is shifting and how people kind of like get jobs after college? Or like, why do you think that people are so excited about hackathons? Right.

I think two things. I think people are craving meaningful problems and looking to build something really cool, right? So what is the coolest thing you can build out there? That's one thing I sense.

The second one, I think people crave the community and say, hey, I want to meet like-minded people. I want to be a part of the community of the best hackers in the world. I want to meet the people that have their passion and their side projects. Well, on the other hand, I mean, I used to work in the space of AI for coding as well.

And so really happened to build some of the foundational models there. And that really accelerated so much how much you can build in 24 hours And we seen this in the last year as well You know like from struggling with user interface to okay let just focus on the core AI component And then let's think about the messaging and the testing, but you can do so much more. And that means, yes, if you're already insanely technical, you can amplify this and bring this to the next level, while on the other hand, you can also enter the field and everybody can become a creator.

You know, PMs become software engineers, software engineer to come PMs right now. So it's like very fluid. And I think I see the trend too, that the more so hackathons are coming and honestly, I attended a ton. I was like, this is awesome.

And here are some areas to improve. Some areas to improve. And then we really try to craft an experience where on the one hand, you get to know cool people and you facilitate the community part of things. But on the other hand, you also take away that often I've seen people talk for eight hours and bid for two and you're like, oh my god, I just, I wish we had landed on an idea in minute number one and then we could just spend the rest of the time really building it out, learning a new stack, learning a new library, learning a new tool, and bringing something to life that you're proud of afterwards.

And honestly, I've seen people go and apply to YC with the ideas that seeded in a hackathon. Actually, the idea for Cursor was was born after a month long hackathon at MIT. And seeing how this story goes from a seed, an awesome team, to something that really, really took off and was one of the fastest adopted AI products out there in the universe, that was just so inspiring to see as well. That's incredible.

Yeah, I mean, it's awesome to see so many builders being so excited to get together. Hackathons are really fun. We've done a few here. And AI tools have definitely unlocked a lot for like what less technical people can build, including myself.

So I love it. Something that's kind of interesting that you guys do with your hackathon is you have these different like challenge tracks. And there's a lot of different options. And builders are presented with different options than they can pick.

I'm just curious, has this been something that you've always done where you've had different options for builders? Or is this something that I've found to be successful and interesting? Yeah, I think that's motivated by my personal experience with hackathons where I, you know, you come in and then you somewhat say, oh, you can just pitch ideas. And I think we wasted so much time on circling around an idea.

I thought like, wow, if I spend my weekend next to all the homework you had to do at MIT, right? Next to all the homework, all the fun travel and all the fun trips and all the associates you wanted to go to. So maybe it's because maybe it's also the German nature, right? I was craving efficiency and innovating.

On the one hand, yes, I wanted to go and explore different options, but I also was totally willing to just commit for something for like 12 hours and then see what comes out there. But I felt we didn't have the right resources to really validate our problem during a hackathon. So we were guided by assumptions. But I felt like, wow, if I just way more quickly could call somebody and validate, or I could talk to real customers or I could just go to the shop floor of a factory and see whether that's actually a problem, my solution in the 12 hours I'm investing would be so much more informed.

And honestly, then having worked at McKinsey before, where my job was go and look at a company, see and find where the opportunity is to bring AI as a toolkit into an organization and then critically think, does it make sense to build this? Is there a return of value or is it nice to have? And so we're trying to balance like we're trying to balance pretty much this methodology where we say, okay, yes, we already do the pre-validation for you, right? So we talked to experts before, we partner with awesome organizations like Spiral and, you know, do all their thinking over the course of two to three months and say, what could be a next big opportunity similar to, yeah, similar to other moonshot factories out there, which would say like, hey, what is this innovation methodology and how can you not only bring people together in a build, but how can you craft the facilitation that it becomes a rapid innovation engine, rapid experimentation engine.

You already have a pre-validated problem and everybody leaves with a prototype. So if you want to move on and you want to pitch and go and fundraise, then we believe all the problems that are in a hackathon you can build a company on. And on the other hand, some of the projects, I think they're just super fun and I would really love to use it. So I would sign up, yeah.

User number one, sign me up. And so that's the sort of mix of, you know, externally sourced, externally validated, plus our own ideas, the crazy ideas that we have. We were like, okay, we're looking for people that are like-minded, that are excited. And that doesn't mean that you can't innovate, right?

Only because there's a track and a problem statement that pretty much is an invitation to say, oh my God, you're so excited about agents. You're so excited about video generation. You're so excited about humanoids. You're so excited about brain research, right?

So whatever flows your boat, they invite you to join a track and you do have the problem statement and moonshots, but then you can always innovate within, right? So convince us that there's a really elegant way to do this, or you have an awesome hero feature that you really like, or you just bring a data set yourself and turn it into do something very creative, I think creativity is always encouraged. Yeah. Yeah, I agree that it helps to give people like a starting point too, especially with a really short hackathon.

People love to build what they want during a hackathon, but I think it's a lot of people come in and like spend a lot of time not knowing what to do or like having stressed out before. I'm excited. I'm curious. So yeah, you said that some projects are moving on to try to get YC and maybe some of them are just cool.

In your experience, what do you think the projects that have been most successful, what have they done well? Any tips for builders? Yeah, I think they know how to execute. It's pretty simple.

I think they know how to execute and they know how to have fun. And they're strong in communication too, right? Because by the end, it's awesome if you know to build, but then you also need to go out there and excite others. Excite others excite the jury team If you do it insanely well there the opportunity to become part of a venture incubation program that we facilitate with a lot of Harvard MIT alums also here in the Bay Area and we pair you with the MBAs, right?

So you have somebody that helps you with the go-to-market, and you can focus on the core technology and then have structured the program and our demo days and investor days. So really say, okay, you can seed your idea and can you replicate the cursor story, but you have a ton of help, right? So you have an industry mentor, you have the MBAs, you have your peer group, your community are out there. And so my only advice is get started and experiment.

Even if you don't like your idea, you're not married to your idea, right? You're like, you can be committed for one minute, right? Awesome. Then you get exposure to a new field.

You can be committed for 24 hours or you can be committed for the next three months or you say, awesome, I want to tackle this opportunity and make this my, you know, makes my goal, makes this my vision, my vision, my purpose. So it's pretty much, it's like a candy shop that you're in and then you can do the tasting. Yeah, you can do the tasting and it's totally fine to experiment, yeah. Well, I'm super excited to see what comes out of this hackathon that's happening in like 10 days.

So it's been a little bit of time talking about some of the spiral things that we're doing. So we're really excited about this challenge, but we were also really excited to meet you and you did not come from like a Bitcoin background or like you didn't really know what Spiral was before. I'm just so like curious, like what was your first reaction to like, oh, this like Bitcoin organization that's part of Block Inc. They want to be part of this like AI hackathon.

Right, right, right. So the introduction came from the introduction, yeah, it came from Adam Jonas. He was like, hey, I have a conversation with Steve and Haley. And I'm like, oh, I would love to learn more, right?

Driven by curiosity. And then the other thing that kicked in I kicked in and it sounds funny too. I took a system security class at Harvard. So how do you keep all these computer systems safe?

How do you exploit? How do you exploit and find the vulnerabilities? And then we had one class on crypto and our professor was really anti-Bitcoin. He was like, oh my God, if you want to lose your money on an exchange, which gets hacked, then awesome.

There's where you should put your money. That's what you call like crypto exchange, right? And for me, not having had much exposure to the field, as I'm more from the classical AI field, I would say, and the applied physics field, always I had this type of, you know, the voice of my professor in my ear who was like, okay, the anonymity, question mark, is the power really, really deceiving you, question mark? How much energy does it take?

Question mark, right? How much energy does it take? Do you have, what type of, like, what type of activities get financed by this? who has access, who doesn't have access.

So I'm always taught us a lot of critical thinking, I would say. And so I paired critical thinking with curiosity, right? And probably with the two backgrounds, I was really curious to also just like come here, learn more about what's the ultimate goal, how you're envisioning the future, where in the future technology stack of all the opportunities that you can build and unlock with technology to tackle the big problems out there. how does it come in?

How does it relate to traditional payment system? What is your goal? Like who is in the community? And then was very, very positive, surprised by, on the one hand, differentiating things that are just put into one bundle and going beyond, you know, somebody 45 minutes explaining to me that there are like, that there are different aspects to this, but then going like deeper and understanding, okay, yeah, if you think about the future of finance, you think about agents, if you think about the economy, if you think about inclusion, there are different use cases you can build on top.

And then I was just so fascinated and was like, yeah, there's different world and a different association to the term Bitcoin, a different association to between Bitcoin and crypto. Let's separate the two things, right? So let's separate the two things and really focus on what's the goal to achieve here and how can technology be a means to this? How can Bitcoin be a place to this?

Well, I love that. And definitely, I mean, all of your critical thinking is super valid. And it is also totally understandable that Bitcoin has some preconceived notions that people have with the word. And it's all valid.

And we are very excited that you are like so open to talking more. And we're for this challenge. It's, yeah, thinking a lot with AI and, you know, this future world of like agents and money and everything just kind of being completely different. in this like total digital instant world.

Well, we can talk a little bit about our challenge and how Spiral is excited about how maybe Bitcoin and Lightning can be part of the solution to agentic money. I'm just so curious how you are thinking about agentic money too. Yeah, so I think there is so much opportunity and that's maybe a product manager role like Lenz that now kicks in. I think who is the end user, right?

Who's the end user? What's the opportunity? what's the use case you can unlock and then also acknowledge how global our planet and the economy has become so then thinking through okay how do agents change how anything happens in our world how you get things done and you talk to an agent via voice how do you do in the image video domain how do you write software code with this how do you do search how do you you know, like how do you do data preparation? How do you do whatever it is?

What is in, what is, how do you do storytelling, right? So what are the different use cases that in general agents can unlock, but also how they're changing the future, like the future of work, right? How does it change the future of work? How does it change reach?

And then how does it change? How do you transact? Like how you reward, how you earn, how you transact, and what's the growth profile, right? I think one thing which I super curious about if you think of unlocking new industries and look back at the last 30 years and think how much value and wealth was created in the digital space that a trajectory which is so so steep And so I would expect yes now the business model of AI changes in terms of what's the inference cost and you can't copy software at the same cost.

Like at zero cost anymore, like inference is more expensive. But that also means if you really want to scale, then you need to find a technology, you need to find an infrastructure, you need to find a mechanism that you can afford this to scaling across the globe and then creating a future workforce that's probably AI augmented and in partnership with agents. Can I agree more? My last question is, I have lots more questions, so I'll just do one more.

So, I mean, yeah, the hackathon's been happening for a year. AI is, so much has changed in the past year and what you can do. Right now, definitely a lot of thinking around agents and agents being the user and just kind of like having more agents involved in your own work. What do you think is going to be like the biggest area that people are going to be working on in this hackathon or something that's like, you know, maybe different for this hackathon as a focus area than was even just like a quarter ago?

Right. I almost fear the focus areas remain probably similar because interest of a thousand people is very broad, right? But I think the speed is different. So I think the speed by which you could say, oh my God, is this really done in 24 hours?

I see our jury members be like, hey Lynn, can you check this GitHub repository with me? Or like, can you check this video? Like there's only an AI talking. Have I really done this in 24 hours?

So I get those questions from our jury members and they're super, you know, senior across the AI industry here in the Bay Area at MIT, but also in many cities in the US and abroad. And so seeing how their eyes, or like that surprise in their eyes in terms of the speed of the shipping, I think that's, and like, yeah, that's I think what stands out to me. And then in terms of themes, I feel, well, it's a little bit skewed because we provide the themes, right? So we're like, awesome.

Are you excited about a human-robot-brain interface? And how can you actually instruct your humanoid having a brain scan device so your thoughts are directing humanoids? Sounds sci-fi, but the first prototype was built during the last hackathon, right? Or you can say, can you build your investment agent in the finance space?

So do I really need to watch my portfolio actively or can my agent do that for me, right? Then we have stuff which is in the 3D generation space. So how do we bridge physical and digital AI? So can I accelerate all the products, all the products that you physically design and want to manufacture and go from a three-month design cycle to one minute?

And then you can accelerate. And then if you do this, right, then think of this, what's the impact on the economy? What's the impact on a payment system? Then you suddenly accelerate this entire flywheel of goods moving around, being able to design, and being able to manufacture so much more.

And so I feel, I see that, and I like two things I see, I feel people spread out across challenges because they have different backgrounds, different interests. I see the people by the end are sleep deprived when you submit at 6 a.m. San Francisco time, the next day, the next day.

So I see that theme. And I see that more people are willing and hungry to build their companies and like move their projects forward. Well, it's going to be awesome. I'm excited to see what happens in the speed of things now because so much has changed in the last three months.

Well, okay. Last thing is if people are wanting to apply or learn more, where should they go? I'll include any other links. But you said that applications are due Friday.

Friday. Right. And that's like it. Like you better get your application in by Friday.

Exactly. So, you know, we're German. It's going to close on time. What time is Friday?

It's going to be Friday 9 p.m. because it's running on MIT time. MIT end of day.

So that means East Coast time. Well, MIT time is typically five minutes late. So get a five minutes great period, right? But like, no, Friday by midnight, Boston time.

So 9 p.m. here in the Bay Area. Things are closed.

So we have time to review all the applications. And where do you need to go? It's heck-nation.ai.

That's where we host our application form. that's where you see, oh, what are the prices? What can I win? How does it work?

Do you need an idea? No, just come. Do you need a team? No, you can just come, right?

So you can find other people. You can participate solo. You can bring your agent. You can bring your humanoid.

Humanoids are loud. You can bring your humanoid into the hub or your robot dog if you want to. So we're totally open, totally open to that. And yeah, hack-nation.

ai is where we host the application form. and then check your spam. Check your spam. You realize if you put like hack into your email address, that's actually not that smart.

And so not that smart. So yeah, check your email spam folder just to make sure to not miss the opportunity and then use it. It's an invitation to come here to the Presidio, come here, work with Spiral, meet the Spiral team, meet the Spiral team, tap into awesome prices. and yeah, the only way to fail is if you don't learn anything.

And so the bar is really, the bar is on you and the bar is really low and it's an invitation. Yeah. Amazing. I'll be here.

But yes, Presidio Bitcoin is going to be an official hub for Hack Nation. So we're going to be open really early, 7.30 a.m.

PT on April 25th. Yeah, apply to the hackathon and say you're in San Francisco and then you have to then apply to get into the hub spot because we unfortunately can't have like everybody. I hate to be completely honest. I like 50 people.

So yes, well, thanks so much for coming here. And then you're going to come back soon. So I'm excited to see you then. I'm going to be the early bird.

You'll be here at 7.30 a.m. Great.

Well, have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ellie, for having me. Yeah, of course.

Bye.