Drawing inspiration from "The Greatest Show on Earth", a 17-year-old high school student organized a hackathon | WAVES

Author | Xu Muxin

Editor | Liu Jing

Hangzhou, Lakeside Innovation Research Center, is like a university and a music festival venue simultaneously.

Hundreds of young people are gathered here. Some are hurrying with their laptops to workshops, while others are sitting together discussing. Tents are set up on the ground, and sleeping bags are scattered around, emitting a strong sweaty odor in the hot summer.

At this moment, a meeting of restaurant owners next door has ended. They have to pass through this group of young people to leave the park. When passing by the sleeping bags, some bosses stop to observe. This scene creates a strong sense of isolation - middle-aged entrepreneurs from traditional industries and post-00s geeks who believe that the AI era is approaching. They meet briefly here and are likely to complete the collision between the previous and the next generations in the future.

This is a hackathon site. Hackathon comes from the English word "hackathon", which is a competitive activity. Usually, participants with different backgrounds such as developers, designers, and product managers form teams to jointly develop a project within a limited number of days and finally participate in the evaluation. Many successful products, including GroupMe and Zapier, have been born from hackathons in the United States.

But the hackathon called "AdventureX" in front of us is somewhat different. It is themed with five rock music tracks and lasts for 5 days. The participants are all under the age of 26, so it is a "hackathon for young people".

But more importantly, the initiator of this event is a 17-year-old high school sophomore.

"WAVES" is a column of Hidden Currents. Here, we will present the stories and spirits of a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors.

"You are paying for the great famine!"

Using his sister's ID card to secretly participate in many hackathons of foreign universities, Ryan Zhu thought he was experienced, but after failing in the CTB (China thinks big) international competition, he decided to organize a hackathon competition himself.

He set some principles for this event: the participants should be under the age of 26, not experienced entrepreneurs or factory workers; no registration fee will be charged to the participants, but accommodation and prizes will be provided to them instead; the competition will last for five days, and the speeches of the guests can only take up one night.

Reimbursement for travel, accommodation, catering, venue, prizes and bonuses, these costs add up to about 1 million yuan.

It is April 2024, and there are only three months until the opening day he set. This is completely an improvised team: except for him, there are only a few classmates in the class and some friends he met online. Everyone is about the same age, with dreams but no money. Ryan Zhu also asked his parents, "two practitioners in traditional industries", who did not agree with his idea and would not give any financial support.

Therefore, from the very beginning, Ryan Zhu was very clear that he did not have any resources, so he could only use the method of stepping on his left foot with his right foot and snowballing to leverage this 1 million yuan with a very low cost. And "young people" are this lever. He drew some inspiration and confidence from a documentary about Live Aid on Bilibili. After all, this famine benefit concert, which is known as "the greatest performance in the world", was initially just an outdated singer united with some residents in his community.

He made several exquisite pictures, marked with keywords, including: a hackathon for young people, completely free, in Hangzhou in July, etc. He also spent more than 100 yuan to buy promotion on Xiaohongshu.

ZhenFund became the first snowflake of this snowball.

Perhaps only an early-stage fund like ZhenFund, which focuses on "investing in people", in the market would be willing to participate in an event that currently only has a few students. ZhenFund contacted Ryan Zhu, and without too much verification of the attendance of the guests he "intended to invite", partner Liu Yuan confirmed that he would participate in the event.

Ryan Zhu quickly put ZhenFund's LOGO into his PPT and WeChat official account articles. This endorsement has increased the credibility of this event. Many people even mistakenly thought that this was an event jointly organized by ZhenFund - even Zhang Nan, the then president of Feishu.

Next, Ryan Zhu participated in the Beijing Vision OS Conference as a volunteer and met Race, the host at that time. Later, Race introduced him to Zhao Yi. Zhao Yi was very interested in this young man's hackathon and introduced Ryan Zhu to the Lakeside Innovation Research Center. In the office of the vice president of Lakeside, Ryan Zhu gave a PPT presentation. Later, he said that the essence of the PPT is: "Write some seemingly cool words and explain them in plain language."

In any case, Lakeside was very receptive. They were willing to provide the venue and catering, which solved at least 500,000 yuan in costs.

Although no one has paid so far, this event has taken shape, and the next step is only the guests and the remaining sponsorship fees.

In the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody", the reason why the organizers were able to attract so many big-name singers is restored. They called the Queen band: "David Bowie is coming, aren't you coming? Well, if you don't come, I will tell the world that you personally refused to donate to the great famine." Of course, they said the same thing to David Bowie.

Ryan Zhu borrowed this strategy. When inviting CEO and investor guests, he would also mention that another very powerful guest has confirmed to participate in our event, although this is only in the "intended to invite" state. And more importantly, Ryan Zhu must constantly emphasize to these guests: You are paying for the great famine / young people, and you are the institution that supports young people the most!

Ryan Zhu divided the sponsorship levels into four levels. The first and second levels only have basic materials and exposure. The third level requires 40,000 yuan, and you can get the personal information of all the registered participants. The fourth level requires 60,000 yuan, but not only can you get this information in advance, but you can also get their contact information. He told the interested partners that ZhenFund is likely to choose the fourth level, so most institutions chose the third level. State-owned enterprises and companies almost all directly choose the highest level. Some people are because of the HR's need to build a talent pool, and some simply do not know what rights and interests they have bought. Ryan Zhu tried to tempt some companies with "Everything is settled, and only 60,000 yuan from you is missing", and some people really paid.

Three months later, Ryan Zhu successfully raised 300,000 yuan.

Refusing to be a "Good Student"

In real life, Ryan Zhu is a high school sophomore. When he was in junior high school at a militarized boarding school in Hangzhou, he began to jiechu the geek forum. In the following four years, he embarked on his "geek" path uncontrollably: self-studying python, participating in nearly 10 hackathons at home and abroad, and independently developing three applications - one of which is an AI to listen to online courses on behalf of others, until now he is holding a hackathon. Now this organization called AdventureX has attracted as many as 38 members.

Previously, he regularly participated in the "Crazy Thursday" event in Liangzhu Cultural Village. This is an independent developer gathering area, and offline activities are held every Thursday. Here, Ryan Zhu met Eve - a later team member, an investor from Linear Capital - a later sponsor, some KOLs in the circle - later judges, and he even met another Ryan, who is preparing to start a startup accelerator for young people under the age of 20.

Perhaps because he spends a lot of time with independent developers both online and offline, Ryan Zhu can smell the changes in the situation more quickly. He tried to seize the opportunity of Web3, but changed the theme before the AI wave came.

These changes also made him feel a kind of time anxiety. He despises "good children" or "exam experts". "If you calculate the opportunity cost, you will know that this is a waste of time." He cares more about doing a real project, just like "building" that every developer is addicted to.

The contempt for "good children" has produced some by-products, such as the joint resistance to the school and parental authority that adheres to the values of "good children". After the school opened prematurely in violation of regulations, Ryan Zhu gathered 100 classmates to call the Education Bureau to report, which evolved into an emergency in the city. However, this protest ended in failure, and Ryan Zhu was given a demerit.

The common aversion to authority is the reason why many team members joined. For example, Eve, whom Ryan Zhu met at "Crazy Thursday", is a good student from childhood to adulthood. This time, she told her parents that she was going to travel, but actually came to support the event secretly. Another co-founder, Xu Chen, Ryan Zhu believes that he has been fighting against his wealthy family background, and he especially insists on eliminating the differences in the backgrounds of all participants in the competition settings.

After the first AdventureX ended, Ryan Zhu expected it to be a university club or NGO organization. He and the team are developing a system that can optimize the entire event process and expect AdventureX to eventually be able to operate independently of him.

Because his ambition is not only this. He is collaborating with a co-founder he met at Penn to develop a social software and plans to promote it in American universities in the September school season. Ryan Zhu's plan is to accumulate users, increase the valuation, and then seek financing.

The Bugle of the Golden Age

The hunger for time in Ryan Zhu is a typical trait of young AI application entrepreneurs in the current era of rapid iteration of AI technology.

A popular saying is that at least one of Zhang Yiming, Wang Xing, and Huang Zheng in the AI era has already started a business. Although this statement is debatable, it is extremely attractive, whether for investors looking for Zhang Yiming or entrepreneurs who want to become Zhang Yiming.

The last day of the AdventureX hackathon is the Demo Day and Award Ceremony. The participants are working hard to attract the audience at their booths. Most of them stayed up all night the previous night, and at this time, both sleep deprivation and excitement are showing on them.

Most of the projects or applications made by the participants start from their own needs, such as a bread machine that desires to be materialized, an AI celebrity tweet companion, an AI version of 58 Tongcheng that sells time, a "Magic Painter" that turns children's paintings into 3D images, and many young men choose to solve the problem of long-distance relationship companionship as their theme.

Most of them are in school, and a small number have some professional experience in Huawei or model factories. This is partly due to Ryan Zhu's observation and preference. In his opinion, people who have professional experience, especially those who have worked as screws in large factories, have a very fixed mindset, which is a minus point. He also added many behavioral test questions to the registration questionnaire, such as "If you meet a Martian, how would you introduce humans to them". One of the answers surprised him: "Shoot the Martian."

To some extent, the future entrepreneurs of this hackathon are more similar to the image of Liu Jingkang, the founder of Insta360: he is unconventional enough, such as hacking into the school's email system and publishing the exam answers in advance on the Internet, and was almost expelled from Nanjing University. And he is also hardcore enough, such as being able to crack Zhou Hongyi's phone number just by listening to the sound of the keypad.

In the current domestic AI application field, nearly 30% of entrepreneurs are such "super individuals" or "technical geniuses". In this hackathon utopia woven by Ryan Zhu, where "commercialization" is not the evaluation standard, every entrepreneur feels the happiness of standing at the forefront. They firmly believe that the AI era will come, and in the long night before the Killer App appears, the changes are so rapid that no one dares to sleep.

But out of the building full of technological equality and idealism, they are facing more challenges in the real world. For example, usually within one year after a technical tipping point (such as ChatGPT) appears, senior industry experts will gradually enter the field. This not only represents the development of the AI technology field but also means that they will establish more barrier-based "deep applications". For individual or small team entrepreneurs, extreme speed is almost their only bargaining chip.

An example is ChatMind. After ChatGPT emerged, Shi Tianfang, the founder, realized that the logical ability of GPT makes it very good at making mind maps. He didn't waste time verifying the idea. While the team members were still discussing the possibility of the project, he spent one night making the prototype of ChatMind. Now it seems that there is no technical difficulty in ChatMind, but it was positioned early and has more subscription users. Later, ChatMind was successfully acquired by the leading application Xmind.

Being acquired may be a relatively happy ending in the current AI application field. More players have to accept the fate of silence after a burst of popularity. For example, Miaoya Camera, and even its predecessor Lensa, most AI + image field applications have a life cycle of only two months.

This seems to be an unsolvable problem for many to C applications at present. Therefore, some independent developers have proposed such an AI application entrepreneurship idea. Although the popular AI applications have a cycle, as long as the methodology of "mass production" can be mastered and the cycle of being a flash in the pan can be jumped out of, the heat curve can be infinitely extended.

But putting the problem aside for the time being, more young people join the wave of AI entrepreneurship because they see opportunities and make up for the regret of not catching up with the mobile Internet entrepreneurship. Currently, comparing the AI era with the mobile Internet era has become a common sense, and people are trying to predict the laws of the development of the AI era in this comparison.

For example, after AI applications have changed from efficiency tools with the theme of save time to toys with the theme of kill time, many institutions tend to believe that this is similar to the eve of the explosion of mobile Internet applications in 2000, so it will not be too long before the industry erupts.

Another example is the revival of hackathons. The hottest period of domestic hackathons was when the mobile Internet emerged. There was almost one every day at that time. Later, as the Internet entered the second half, the scope and frequency of such activities have decreased a lot. Until recently, AI-themed hackathons have begun to appear frequently again.

In fact, around 2016 - 2017, there were also some small mobile Internet-themed hackathons organized by high school students, targeting participants of similar ages. Most of them are now pursuing a PHD. Eight years later, finally, another hackathon organized by high school students appeared, as if blowing the bugle of the next golden age.