Joining HF0

On March 1st, I’m moving to Miami for 3 months to be the lead partner at HF0's next batch.

The first question you may have is: “What’s HF0?”

HF0 (“Hacker Fellowship Zero”) is a residency program for engineers to help them jumpstart building ambitious companies. We accept 10 sets of founders each batch and allow them to hyper-focus for 3 months. Food, housing, workspace, and other amenities are provided to maximize focus. There is also a $125k investment for 7% equity.

Our goal is to slingshot founders through the most challenging parts of starting a company, including finding product-market fit and building an early team.

The program has run once before in Miami, and I’m excited to help shepherd it with Dave Fontenot through a second cycle.

The next question you may have is “Why HF0?”

I’m excited to spend 3 months with HF0 and it’s companies for a few reasons.

First, I get excited by helping founders and startups – laying the groundwork for teams to do big things is a huge passion of mine. At Firebase, I loved laying the technical groundwork for millions of teams and apps. Helping founders lay their cultural and strategic groundwork is just as fulfilling. Immersive experiences often lead to transformation of ideas, opinions, and outlooks. The 3 months I spent at YC and the 3 months I spent at acting school at NYU remain some of my most fond memories and most transformative periods. Creating fertile soil for others via HF0 is exciting.

Second, the leverage of talented engineers is only growing. As Archimedies said: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” The lever is code, and the emerging fulcrum is blockchains. While blockchains are an ethically neutral technology, their power and impact are immense. They will benefit from self-aware people to build and steward the industry, and I’m hopeful that HF0 will give the opportunity for levelling up the most thoughtful engineers to emerge as leaders of this new space.

As a side note, I spent the past 6 months at Chain.link as an EIR helping guide their product team and learning about the industry.

Finally, as the pandemic “ends”, I’ve got an itch to spend time working in-person again after 2 years of being alone in a room looking at other humans through a glowing rectangle. Miami is becoming a hub of activity, especially in the web3 space, with an event to attend each night of the week if you wanted to. It feels reminiscent of when I moved to Silicon Valley in 2009 and is a unique moment in time to witness and participate in.

So, if you’re thinking of building something (web2 or web3), please drop an application here before Sunday the 13th.