About Hackers & Founders
Hackers & Founders started as a simple meetup in 2008 with a few people getting together in a bar. Jonathan started the meetup at Laura's insistence, that he needed to get away from the computer, get out of the house, talk to geeks who were working on their own startups and learn from them.
In late 2010, Hackers & Founders had grown to over 2,000 members, and Laura and Jonathan got sick of watching promising young startups die because of a lack of connections, education, mentors and funding. Jonathan made the mistake of complaining about these problems to a couple of his advisers. Soon after, those advisors began kicking his butt to fix those problems.
Angel Office Hours and The Co-op were started as ways to help founders help each other, connect with mentors and members of the investment community. And, Laura and Jonathan set their other startup plans aside, to turn Hackers & Founders into a startup that helps other startups succeed.
Our goal is to open-source and disrupt the process of forming teams, founding startups, accessing capital and learning everything about building startups from coding to business operations. We want to help as many founders as possible become successful serial entrepreneurs. We want to help other startup communities around the world grow, thrive and provide them with better access to the resources we have access to in Silicon Valley. And, we'll manage to have a lot of fun along the way.
Hackers & Founders is in the process of becoming a B Corporation, which means it pursues multiple bottom lines: for profit as well as for public benefit.
We have a long way to go. Thanks for joining us on the journey.
At most meetups, you will find Jonathan schmoozing, asking questions, learning and preachifying about all things startup related. Jonathan started Hackers & Founders and has been buying folks a beer ever since. Rumor has it he dreams of hacking how Silicon Valley does startups and schemes to make life easier for founders world wide. He really wants more robots in his life.
Laura came on board in 2009 to manage the logistics of an ever-growing group. She plans, manages and organizes pretty much everything Hackers & Founders does. She can't bear the sight of hungry geeks, and if you really want to make her happy, strike up a conversation with Laura about B Movie actors of the 1940's, monster movies of the 1950's, why Buster Keaton was so much better than Charlie Chaplin, or how Star Wars was really just a remake of Akira Kurosawa's movie, The Hidden Fortress.
Brooke joined Hackers and Founders in 2011 and her job is to tell people what is actually going on with Hackers & Founders, since Jonathan and Laura seem to struggle with that. She also helps out with event planning and is our goto person for anything that needs getting done.
Questions? Submit them to our FAQ. We'll post an answer as soon as possible.