Tim Ryan.
How's it going? Zach? I'm wonderful.
Granby. Today, we're gonna be talking about something on Granby. You know, I'm trying to, like, people, like, how you doing? I'm like, I'm Granby. You know, that means I'm good.
You know? I'm chill. You know? I'm like, what the cool kids say, that slaps. I don't know what that means.
But I'm I'm gonna try and get it so that it gets out of you all's vernacular.
Yeah.
I think we met because of something like we're gonna talk about today. Right? Like Yeah. So in some capacity.
Yeah. It is. I'm looking forward to hearing more about this. It seems like there's a lot of people that want to see this happen. Mhmm.
I think it's ready for a resurgence of some kind, if you will.
Okay. Yeah. I guess so.
I mean, it's just one of those deals. Right? That, man, two episodes in a row. The cocoa kinda put everybody back in shelter, and, it's just really crazy to think that it's just however many years, five years after the fact, trying to get get people back into community settings or just to be around one another. I mean, community is a big thing, especially when it comes to coding and vibe coding, if you will.
Whenever I see someone with a mask on, I'm like, you're sick. It's just my immediate thought. No. You're sick. Not like you're disgusting.
I mean, like, you are actually ill. I I mean, is that is that ridiculous to think? Like, let let's say you're at the grocery store. Speaking of the coco, let's say you're the grocery store, and you're there every day. And the same, you know, associate never wears a mask.
Then all of a sudden, the person touching your food has a mask on. What am I supposed to think?
You're sick.
You're sick. You're ill. Get away from me. Next register. That's what I think.
Where is the where is the hand sanitizer? Yeah. Zach, have you found you're have you found that, are they becoming more and more empty, or do are are they routinely restocked when you go to the dispenser when you walk into a a place?
Oh, lord. That's a good question. I would say 25% actually have a little juice juice in those things. You know? Yeah.
I was today, I I was at a place. One of them had it. One of them didn't. Same building. I don't know.
Cool. I mean, I understand it's an expense that you don't wanna pay. But, also, like, when you're in a building, most of those things are never touched. Anyway, learned something pretty cool today. It's called technology.
Yeah. And I'm I'm excited to to learn all about it. And, yeah, today, we have a guest, Jace Breaker. I think I said that right. What do you think, Tim?
Yep. Jace Breaker. That's the man, the myth. Welcome to the show, Jake.
Thanks so much for having me, guys.
Okay. So did you grow up here?
I did. I grew up in Hampton.
Okay. Oh, wow.
And you went from Hampton to where?
To Old Dominion University.
Okay. And then did you study like software engineering there?
I didn't actually. I started in electrical and computer engineering and that's a big part of now we're gonna talk about build weekend in a little bit, how it came to be. You know, I wasn't always a software guy and I I slowly kinda got pulled more into it, and hackathons were were actually a big part of that.
At ODU?
At ODU. Yeah. So I I started electrical, and then I picked up computer engineering as a double major, and that's what I graduated with.
What years were you there?
Twenty eleven through 2015.
Oh, wow. That's interesting. So that's around the time frame when I would have done Start Norfolk, which is a build to come in
the weekend. We spent a lot of time in the
At OU. Yeah.
Well, yeah, I was there a lot. That was when Nancy Gerden was there as well. So I got lots of great advice from her and mentorship. Shout out Nancy.
Cool. Saw her recently. Great. She's always been a great resource and someone who doesn't just talk the talk but will also walk the walk. You hear a lot of people like, yeah.
I can help you with that. Nancy has never been one to not do that, and I I always appreciate that. And she always seems, like, very genuinely excited to to see ones Yeah. To see something.
She is, she is very tireless in her efforts. It's great. She's everywhere.
When that when she took that position, she was not originally expected to take this. I don't know if you were around at this point, Tim. Yeah. You had
to. Well, I think that she talked about it on when we had her on the show. I don't even know what episode that was. But June 2, they they else. Yeah.
Yeah. She was on the interviewing committee if I remember right. And then
Yeah. And then I remember when it I think she told me or someone told me it was her. I immediately called her, emailed her, whatever, and I was like, well, no one thought that it was a possibility, but sure as hell makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. Yep. She's but she She's been a great champion ever since.
So was that where kind of entrepreneurship became an idea to you, Jake, or or what?
That's such a good question. I think it was. I wanna say that that may have even been the the nexus of it. It is getting involved with building software projects quickly. Like I said, hackathons were the introduction.
Somehow, that got me plugged plugged into the broader idea of startups and entrepreneurship, and I started following like Hacker News. You know, that's where a lot of the, the tech builders will will see stuff and just saw loads of articles on there. You know, that was around the the time the concept of an MVP came into the the popular discourse and, you know, different ways of building lean, indie hacking. Yeah. I got plugged into all of that.
What's, I'm trying to think. The the event was when? That was, like, year and a half ago, I wanna say. I I remember posting something.
You're talking the seven five seven build weekend. Yeah. That was three years ago.
Was it that long ago?
I wanna say that was August 2023. Right?
So Yeah. So almost two years.
Yeah. And then I think we turned another one around pretty quickly, February the year after that, and then this has been the longest hiatus between 2024 and 2025.
Yeah. Because I wanna say that what I because I because you would I because I remember I was like, who is this Jake guy? I just I I think that I got, like, some random email or whatever. Then I, you know, I went to the form, and I whipped up a, a story to push out. And then from a traction wise, standpoint on the, from our web traffic, that story did very well.
So I was like, man, that's a, an indicator that there is a thirst for for something like that. But I I do remember that, it got a ton of views when we when when that was pushed.
That's cool to hear. I didn't know that.
Yeah. So what so okay. So you like to tinker, it sounds like. You like you're you're interested in the aspect of just, like, what's possible. You did some hackathons at ODU, and then you just said, alright.
Well, I know about about this space downtown. Maybe I can do something there. Like, how did you think of the weekend? Like, where where are around that stuff?
Yeah. I mean, it might be worth going a bit into my broader journey. So it was Yeah.
Let's do it.
You know, at ODU, like I said, that was when I was an electrical engineering major. I do I still love electrical engineering, you know, that's how I got pulled into engineering at all. Was like tinkering on the little circuit boards. And I the overlap with computer engineering is pretty tight at ODU. They electrical and computer engineers take a lot of the same classes, and that was my introduction to computer science.
And, yeah, I was I was on the sailing team, and, like, there was an opportunity to to try and tinker with little sailing watch. You know, that was, that that was the thing that one of my computer engineering professors, doctor Kuchkov, encouraged me to do. I was like, yeah, you could build that. There's this little thing called the Arduino, you know, you guys are probably familiar, where you just write a little while loop and it's a little piece of hardware and it has all sorts of sensors and you can do things in the real world. And I wanna say that was the start of it.
That was where I was like, this software thing is cool. I didn't know you could just build stuff like that. And then fast forward a little bit, somehow I got connected to BitCamp that's hosted at the University of Maryland. That's a collegiate hackathon. And there's different categories of these events.
The collegiate ones are the biggest ones. BitCamp is an example of that where they're hosted at the basketball arena, you know, and they fill the arena with coders and like you apply to attend. And if you're accepted, oftentimes they'll cover your travel. There's like a big sponsor pool because all the tech companies want to hire the talent there. And, that was like a a turning point for my career was I went there and built something with my buddies over a weekend.
You know, we're just with Red Bull. We're cranking code out all night long, and I had left that weekend and I was like, that was so much fun. I just did work all weekend. You know, I could get paid to do this. Like, I think maybe this should be my job.
And that was where the whole idea of of pivoting towards computers and software came to be. It was was kind of a transformational experience. And moving forward a little bit even, I was fortunate to get an interview at Apple while I was in school, and, you know, get getting through to that panel was was pretty tricky. And I remember I was anxious leaving that interview. I was like, you know, what Stanford graduate did they talk to before me?
And I'm just this OU guy. Like, they're they're not gonna hire me. You know, I I was not surprised, but, you know, like, there's a lot of competition for those jobs. And and some of the things that I think helped were, like, I to the hiring manager on the interview panel, you know, I demonstrated, like, look, this is the app I built at PenApps. You know?
It was a little, like, blood centrifuge. It would it would measure the RPM if you were like doing a lot of if you were you were in the world country, you know, and you had a vial of blood and you were trying to do a handheld centrifuge, like it would help you with that. But anyway, I think like having those projects, those hackathon projects on my resume, being able to demonstrate, like, I can build even while I'm in college was, like, kind of what opened the door for me even to get this this pretty sought after tech job. And to answer your question, like how did build come to be? I left Apple, I came back to the area, you know, I have lots of friends here.
My family's here. And I kinda wanted to do it again, you know. I joined a startup, networking group called OnDeck. They had their Foundry weekend. They had a really lightweight template for doing a hackathon that I enjoyed.
I kinda wanted to do something in person in the area, and I was just sitting in the startup studios. This was when Hunter and Evans were both there at the time, and I was just like, we could do one here. Like, look at this is a great space for building, and no one's building in here. Why don't we have you all ever thought about doing a hackathon? And they were like, no, but, like, you could help us with that.
And long story short, I just forgive me for hijacking, but I just wanted to to to show that whole narrative because the I might have liked to hear that when I was at WU, you know, how valuable these things could be.
I did, I did dig that up, Jake. And so, yeah, I pushed something out in July at 23, and then that did end up being the number two viewed article of the year.
No kidding. That's incredible.
Yeah.
I had no idea. That's so cool to hear.
I like it when show gets hijacked. Let's do more of this. Let's you know, let's disruption's okay. You know? Yeah.
Okay. So interesting. The why don't wait. As soon as you said Arduino board, is that the same thing as a Raspberry Pi? Like, or like
Very similar. So the Raspberry Pi is actually a computer, and the Arduino is a microcontroller. So it's Okay. Doesn't quite have the processing power, but it also can perform computations with lower latency. So, like, depending on the application, one or the other might be better, but they're in the same category.
I feel like a decade ago, Raspberry Pis became, like, the thing and everyone was tinkering with them. Yeah. And are they are they still around? Is that a thing? Like what did anything ever happen to those?
That's a good question. I think they're still a thing. Like all the smart lights in my apartment are controlled by one of my Raspberry Pis. If you want to have non Apple smart lights that don't wanna pay the licensing fee, talk to your home kit, you can put Homebridge on your Raspberry Pi. So I'm still using one.
I think people do. But you're right. Perhaps there has been a a bit of a decline. I'm not sure what the what accounts for that.
So does Apple come to ODU, or do you apply to them? Like, what does that look like? Because you you think of a company like that, and you don't think you don't immediately associate ODU like you kind of implied. Right? You think of Stanford, stuff like that.
Yeah. You know, we we have an Apple. We used to have an Apple store in Norfolk, but, obviously, those are very different things. Right? Like, how how what does that look like?
How did you get involved with them?
That was that actually is a pretty wild story in itself. It started when I was applying for internships and I had applied for a few, I think Google, Apple and it was Facebook at the time. Facebook and Apple never got back to me for an internship. Google did. I got one an internship phone screen with them.
It was challenging. I didn't make the cut. Turning around as I'm graduating, you know, I got another interview panel with Google for a full time job. They gave me another chance and I didn't make it through with Google then either. But around the same time, you know, I was like, Apple never got back to me, but I'm just gonna go on Apple's website and, you know, I've only ever applied for an internship.
Let me just apply for something. And I didn't even know, like, on jobs.apple.com. It was like a pretty clunky website at the time. I didn't realize it was multiple pages of job listings. I just thought the 25 on the page were all the Apple jobs and so I just on the front page, I I clicked on the one that seemed the most interesting.
It was, automation tools and frameworks. You know, do you wanna, like, write the software that helps Apple engineers write software? And I was like, heck, yeah. And it was right as I was getting the bad news from Google. That was when I got the call from the Apple recruiter and that's what kick started that process.
But yeah, the wild things I just applied on jobs.apple.com to Wow. The one I saw. But I would say if anyone's listening, don't do that. Like I happen to know I applied for a group within Apple that likes hiring new grads that are scrappy and like not all of them are like that. Know, if I applied for like, you know, staff AIML researcher position, like they wouldn't have called me back, you know.
So it it's wise to select the job you pick wisely, but that was how it happened.
Did you say so did you go to Cupertino? Is that where you went?
Yep. I worked in Cupertino for five years. Got to work at Apple Park for, I think, a little over two. So yeah.
Is Apple Park like the Jurassic Park thing?
Spaceship. Yeah. Wild. I could tell you all sorts of stories about that.
So are you do you get full access to, like can you could you run around that thing? Like or, like, do they block it? Like, how like, how does that work?
On the outside, yeah, people like to do loops. It's exactly a mile around.
Holy
moly. If you do or maybe I forget. It can't be a
I don't
know if it'll make a Yeah.
I guess it could be a mile. Yeah. Think so people would do loops around it. On the inside, the way it's locked down, most people cannot walk all the way around the circumference in the inside. Like, typically
cool if it if it was built that way, though.
It's really Yeah. Yeah. It is like that. It is still pretty cool. And, like, you you have access.
Like, the software engineer, it's in little, quadrants. I forget what they're called, floor plates now. But, like, if you're in software engineering, you could get through two or three quadrants before you hit a wall, and then they won't let you into the, you know, hardware engineering lockdown. But
Yeah. You see a place like that, and I just immediately start to think of, like, severance. Why was I
thinking that too?
Once you go through those front doors, like, alright. You're in. Alright.
Yeah. You know
right now.
One of my former colleagues actually made the same comparison. Like it I I personally loved working there in the building, but it's a very it all all of the spaces look alike a little bit to the point where like I think leadership acknowledged that and was encouraging folks to bring their own character into their offices to give it a little bit more of a splash of color so it doesn't look like, say, the world's nicest hospital. But
Well, yeah. I mean, the Apple stores are super clean, and, you know, there there's not much to them either. So is it similar inside?
It's like a giant Apple store, but, I mean, it's got they've got the largest continuous curved glass panels in the world. So, like, if you're in one of those lockdowns, you know, you get a floor to ceiling view of all of the nature. And like there were trees on the campus before, but they like relocated them all to the perimeter and then they brought in like some ridiculous number of trees, like 2,000 trees they planted to try and make a nature preserve. It's like a $4,000,000,000 project.
What's parking like there?
So there's the sought after parking which is under the ring. I think there's like two or three stories of that and you would need to be there like before 08:30 or nine to get a spot there. And then there's two like four or five story parking decks that are adjacent to the whole campus. So if you have to park there, it's like a ten or fifteen minute walk from there through the wonderful nature to your office, but the people still were not happy about that. Like, oh, I have to walk so far from my parking.
I always rode my bike. You can ride your bike in, and they have, like, these giant two story, bike rooms that have bike racks. And and, yes, bikers paradise out there is cool.
Oh, to be a $3,000,000,000,000 market cap company. Yes.
And I left.
Where are they on the fortune list? They're at fortune five, fortune 10? They're pretty high up there?
They're most people. They bounce them back between one and two. Yeah.
Not not right now.
Apple and Microsoft usually are battling it out.
Oh, I thought it was, like, Walmart and someone else. Walmart and Amazon.
I think, well, in terms of, yeah, in terms of market cap. I mean, they're the to hit a trillion.
Yeah. Total market cap, it's been like Apple and Microsoft lately.
Yeah. Crazy.
Okay. So you you I went through your bio. I went through your site. It was a Medium site or something like that that was telling some of your stories over the weekend, I think. And I can't recall, though, you had written a story about leaving because you wanna come back home to be around family and stuff like that.
I believe it was the story, something like that. And, I mean, is that a hard decision to come to? Had you been thinking about it for a while? What has anything to do with, like, the the craziness going on in in in the world at that time?
Gosh. I mean, especially now, you talk about a tough decision. I mean, I'm sitting here now in probably the hardest tech hiring climate since 2001 as someone who is self employed or at least, you know, working on my own startup in software. So if there's a point where I did regret that decision, it would be now. At the time, certainly not, though.
But the the crux of it is it is a wonderful company to work for. I mean, the culture varies team by team. You know, you can end up on good teams. You can end up on bad teams. I was on a a good team.
But the things they don't tell you, you effectively cannot build your own startup while you're employed at Apple. So you are not allowed to write any blog posts, you're not you cannot post anything to the Apple app store, you can't work on anything that is relevant to the the current or demonstrated future business interests of Apple. So it's basically like you you are employed by us, if you work for Apple, you do Apple stuff. And you could imagine for me, you know, I've always been interested in startups for a long time that I I got pulled back to that. It was a combination of that, and to be honest, living in the Bay Area itself is tough.
You get paid extremely well working at these big tuck companies, but you know, I would look at some of the managers I would associate with at Apple and they would have to make sacrifices, you know, extremely successful people, like making very good money, and they would like buy homes that are pretty far away so that they could have like a normal, you know, suburban house that that could have rooms for their whole family and, you know, just work all the time, of course. So
I I I remember someone who worked at a TV station when I had a TV show, down here. Jake, you probably you weren't here at this point. But they told me that they were hitting Netflix, made $350, and basically didn't have enough money to live because it was so expensive.
That's low for Netflix because Netflix is known for for paying the highest. I mean There was ten years ago. So, I mean, maybe Oh, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
Yeah. There was a point where, like, half of my team got poached by Netflix. They just say, oh, we want all the Apple automation engineers.
Well and it's that those times are crazy. Yeah. All those I mean, like, they would the Googles, Netflix, Apples, Microsofts. I mean, they would just hire people with crazy salaries with no job for for these people to do. But just from a pure offensive standpoint, get them off the street so that they can't do anything productive for a different company.
And now
That's absurd.
Yeah. You know, now, as Jacob's saying, you know, things are just getting a lot more lean, you know, as, if Twitter was was gutted when, Elon made the, the purchase there, and then Zuckerberg took the medicine as well and got lean. And then everyone else started to follow suit. And so, yeah, things are really
Can you blame them? It makes sense. Right? It's like, why have all these extra people if you don't need to?
I'm I'm tracking with you. Shareholders like it too.
You guys heard about the the tax angle there too? I was recently reading about that. So the downturn, there's like three factors. There's there's the zerp phenomenon. There was over investment in startups.
There was a correction as interest rates went up again. Then there's AI. Nobody's hiring because they think that AI's gonna do all the development work. But there's a thing, which is you used to be able to write off all of and this is the case for all expenses, period, but software was included. You used to be able to write off all your software engineering expenses immediately as a, you know, R and D
Oh, right. Right. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. And that what they changed in the most recent tax bill is you can only, amortize it over four years. And so it's it the math's out so that, like, if you're a startup that, you know, does 2,000,000, does 1,000,000 in revenue and, like, you know, has 2,000,000 in losses, you still owe, like, a multi $100,000 tax bill because you have to amortize your engineering spend. So all those start ups, like, when as soon as they got hit with that bill, they had to cut. So there's there's so many things contributing now.
What's your what's your take on the whole AI thing? You embracing it, allowing you to be 30% more productive, and move faster?
I'm absolutely embracing it, but, you know, it's it's controversial. Like, I use it. And, gosh, I hear people on various ends of the spectrum. There's people who are like, AI is the new electricity, and then some of the smartest people I know are like, it's all bullshit. You know?
Sorry. I don't know I could say that. Like so I'm somewhere in between. I use it every day to write code, but I find diminishing returns. I think the ideal scope to have AI work with you at a collaborator right now is it like the function level on the order of like 10 to 50 lines of code, maybe at the class level where you're talking about a file.
But as soon as I give it the autonomy to implement a whole feature spanning multiple classes, multiple files, it like gets it right, you know, 75% of the time, but that 25% of the time costs you so much. When you're like, oh, this entire feature is actually built completely wrong. I have to redo all that work. Mhmm. So so it's nowhere near, in my opinion, able to replace a software engineer.
It makes them more efficient, but I think, just enough to keep the narrative alive that software engineers are gonna get replaced. But I personally think, you know, these tech hiring goes in cycles and that this is an overcorrection and it's gonna bounce back once the, you know, the investment turns around, once, you know, if they change the tax code, if these companies realize what I'm realizing that this AI isn't a silver bullet. No one's going into software right now because of all of these fears, and I could see the exact same thing happening again. Salaries shoot back up, and then there'll be another correction. You know?
You know, especially if you have to go back in and you have to edit everything. You have to go back and and rewrite everything, and it ends up being, you know, the eighty twenty rule, the 20 and and the 20% on that is where you have to spend all your time. And if you're going back, you're like, okay. Well, this made no sense. And Yeah.
The brainpower to actually find it, to to have to tweak it, to rewrite it, to whatever, like, you know, I I could see that
Yeah. It's interesting. Crazy. Just especially in the sense of if you take that one step further, when you have it makes it really, really tough because AI right now almost eliminates the entry level position. Because so to address that 20% correction, you need a more senior engineer to go in and debug or whatever the the proper terminology is.
So it makes it a lot more difficult for, I would think, for the entry level developer. What's your take on that, Jake?
I personally don't think it eliminates the need for an entry level developer. Like, I think you still you know, an entry level developer, for example, with ChatGPT as a collaborator is more powerful than they were before.
Sure. Yeah. 100%.
Yeah. But
It may it makes them more of a mid level more so than entry level. It it was, like, almost like the chance GTP is the entry level developer now.
I think that's that's certainly what the hiring market reflects. I'm not sure which trend contributes most to that. I think there's, in general, an oversupply oversupply of engineering talent. And so, of course, the companies are gonna pick the mid and senior level folks because they can. Whereas the junior folks tend to get hired when everyone's just fighting to get a software engineer hired because there's so much demand.
So that's one thing that contributes to that. But I I think AI probably does as well. I just I personally think it's overstated based on my own experiences writing code. Who knows what's gonna happen with developments now, but I don't see it as, you know, Devin, the the AI software engineer was supposed to, you know, be replacing all the junior engineers a long time ago, and I've only heard bad things about Devin. So a lot of it's not played out.
Well, some of the craziness is when people, like, super, like, rely on on the robots, and then they don't they don't check it in any kind of way. And you're just like, yo. Like, that's sloppy. Like, you see some of this stuff, and you're just like even like we normally record these on StreamYard. StreamYard comes up with these clips afterwards.
And if you don't watch them, you just take them, download them, upload them. Like, usually, there's only let's say it gives you 10 clips. Usually, there's only two or three of that 10 that are actually usable for little glitches, for, captions that are incorrect, it taking a word the wrong way. And so just, you know, some people just say, screw it. I'm gonna do it anyway.
You know? And I'm a I don't care that there's that error in there. I look at that and like, okay. Well, I mean, it doesn't look good. If I'm putting out trash, that's not good for my consumer base, my audience to see this.
They're gonna associate at some point. Well, this is, you know, lackluster. You wanna put out a better product. But it's just it's crazy to me how many people don't actually verify that the thing is even good.
It it's really made me question my own values as a craftsman in the field of software engineering. You know, I I tend to believe that we are a little bit too cavalier in how we write and deploy code. And in a lot of fields, there's a higher sense of rigor. Know, you need like a PE certification to design a building as a structural engineer. Or in medicine, you know, there's this this structured apprenticeship you go through, whereas, like, we just throw junior engineers, you know, out on week one and they're pushing to production.
Right? But at the same time, like, a a cool counterexample is don't if you saw Peter Levels. He's one of the more notable indie hacky indie hacking influencers. And, you know, what you're describing is vibe coding where you just, you know, don't look at the code. You just have the AI do it all.
You know, he vibe coded his own flight simulator. It was very simple, know, it was like kind of a retro flight simulator vibe, but he's got the distribution. He's got thousands of Twitter followers. The game was fun. He monetized it.
He made it so that you could pay some small amount of money for a fighter jet and you could shoot people, and you could pay some larger amount of money to have, you know, a a a low resolution blimp, you know, flying around this, like, crappy looking flight simulator game. He was doing, like, $40,000 a month, and he coded that whole thing without, like, vibe coding. You know? So I don't think there's it's not a black and white thing. You know?
Like, who's to say he was wrong to code that thing and make that money? But I I don't know how to wrestle with reconcile those myself personally.
With what you're doing in a couple weekends, I think vibe coding is actually something that could be really useful for.
Yeah.
So back in the past, I ran Start Norfolk, and it's I and I've only heard you know, I haven't heard you really go through the the what the weekend looks like. But from from the outside, it looks like it's very similar. And so
It is.
Getting people to actually see some, like, some traction from a weekend, I think, is difficult. So but to be able to get something out in a couple of hours or a couple you know, more simply so then the rest of the weekend, you go out and actually, you know, see what it can do, That's pretty unique to me. And, just to see that, you know, in thirteen years, fourteen years, we've been able to do that. I think it really and it also, like, gets your feet wet. Like, do I wanna do this?
Do I like this type of thing? Because I think a lot of you are like, I have this idea. Cool. Test it for, you know, twelve hours. Do you like it even more after that?
No? Okay. Then move on. So I like that aspect of that from that perspective. So give us the rundown.
What like, what is seven five seven is it seven five seven Build Weekend? Is that what
it's called officially?
That's correct.
Yes. Tell us what it is.
So it's a hackathon. A lot of people are confused by that terminology. They hear hack, and they think, like, start, you know, cybersecurity, like, we're breaking into stuff. The the hack, you know, I told you I follow hacker news. Right?
The original ethos of that word word was to hack things together to build. And so hackathon is like, let's throw something together quickly over the course of a weekend. That's the gist of it. It starts with a mixer. We're still finalizing the date.
I think it's gonna be the Wednesday prior to the event, and that's where folks who are interested in participating can get together, socialize their ideas, form teams. Everyone comes into the weekend with a team. On that Friday from noon to about six, we're gonna have some workshops. Tim gave one last year on pitching as an example. That was great.
Thank you so much, Tim. We'd love to have you back, by the way. Didn't mean to hear about that. It's it's been we we're kinda scrambling to get it going this year. We we made a quick decision to make it overlap with control alt play, which is hosted by the digital builders.
I'll talk more about that in a sec. But Friday, it's build weekend. We're gonna do workshops twelve to six. If you don't know how to build, you can attend those. You can learn vibe coding.
That will be one, by, like, Emmanuel Perez. I think, you know, Ted Patterson is going to do no code, low code with Bubble. I'll do coding in MVP, things like that, giving you the skills to build something over the course of the weekend. Building starts on Friday. We blow an air horn at, you know, 06:30 or so, and everyone gets coding.
Assembly runs through the weekend from 9AM to eleven, so that'll be the next day. Saturday, it overlaps with control all play. The digital builders, shout out to Lionel Sapp. He is trying to make events more fun for technologists in the area. He envisions stuff like South by Southwest where, you know, in his words, like, we might have a nightclub like atmosphere at Control All Play, where there's a DJ, there's music, there's art, there's things you can look at, but there's also people building computers.
There's a hackathon going on. There's there's workshops and things like that. So that'll be overlapping with the build weekend. Saturday is like a do not miss day. If you're interested in technology, if you have a kid that's interested in technology, if you just wanna see what's up with this whole thing, control alt play is going on.
That'll be really cool to check out. And then the building wraps up Sunday at noon, and we have judging, which is also, open to the public. You can register for that on Eventbrite through the Sympath seven collab. And that's where there'll be a science fair style event where folks can go and check out all of the the builds that people did. The judges will be going around.
They'll select the top five or so. They will all present to the entire room, and then, the final decision will be made, and prizes will be awarded. Right now, I've got a thousand dollars cash for the winner and to co work at the seven five and seven startup studios for all three teams, and that's just what we've got so far. We're hoping to line up a few more things before we get going.
So people come with their ideas, and then, they just go after it, or is there a general theme slash ideas that people build to solve? How how does that work?
Yeah. You know, you can come and build whatever you want. It's funny. There's a hackathon. I think it's called, like, the stupid ideas hackathon where, like, the the theme there is just like build the dumbest thing you can think of and it is spawned multiple profitable businesses, you know, just because people wanna buy the stupid stuff because it's funny.
So we we don't constrain what you're allowed to build. For our event, we have it structured so that there's just three prizes for and and you can build whatever you want. We're iterating on that. You know, if you go to like a collegiate hackathon, there's often challenges by the sponsors. For example, when I went to PenApps, we won hottest health hack sponsored by Epic, the EHR.
Or, you know, we could imagine locally like Rise Resilience did would do something like, you know, best climate hack. It's just tricky because we have a a smaller number of participants running this locally in the seven five seven. So we we only have so many you know, if we have 17 teams of of four to six people, you know, there's only so many side challenges we can award. But that's something we're we're working on growing and cultivating, especially as we grow our sponsor base and our partner organizations.
Alright. Well, this is not planned, but, Tim and I would like to offer all three of the winners, a chance to attend the StartUp World Cup.
Heck yeah. I'll put that on the website today. Thank you guys so much.
So that and then, you know, it's interesting. I I like what I just heard from the Lionel aspect of that of of trying to and Lionel's great. And I think Tim and I are speaking on the Saturday day. There's a panel at 05:00 that night. So about the the World Cup and some stuff.
But what's interesting is when I did the start Norfolk, the genesis was we were doing this event called Drinks Downtown. It was basically just like, hey. Like, there's some professionals. I use that word very lightly. I was definitely not a professional.
But let's just say, professionals in Downtown Norfolk meet up at this thing called drinks downtown. We took it from, like, four
Cavs. Professional calves.
What?
Your calves. That
Oh, god. Tim, this is a professional show. You can eat your money myself. Let me let me tell
muffles that you said.
Yes. Yes. Muffled. Yeah.
Oh, man.
I I look. As a kid, I threw some steroids in there. It was a really bad idea, and they've just it's a joke. I've
Sure you have calves like the guy on the wall behind you.
I wonder what Duane's calves look like.
I've You'd you'd be jealous of your calves, Zach. I did not mean to hijack my conversation.
He might be. Who knows? Okay. So we have the drinks downtown. We took that from, like, 50 to 200 people.
And then because we were, like, out like, we had moved downtown at some point, and no one was, like, out on, like, a Wednesday. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's like, look. It's happy hour. It's Wednesday. Like, let's all go get a drink, and no one's there.
I was like, okay. Well, let's just throw a party. So we start doing this. This is 2010, 2011 time frame. We are also at the same time, not on the same days.
We are hosting, like, the UX user user groups, some of the tech, user groups, some of the AI AIGA user group events. And I was like, hold on a All of these people are, like, loosely associated. Like, they all have a roll out of business. How can we take that, put them all on a weekend thing and say, build type of thing? But just like you were saying, it's like, we want this to be different and collaborative and unique.
And so we're like and I think I got away from this. But the start, Norfolk, we had bands, a couple of bands.
That's so cool.
Which was yeah. It you it's like, I don't think people who don't host events who just show up understand the logistics that go on in an event and how difficult it is to try and be like, hey.
Like Well Just band it. What I'm hearing, man, like, the the to make this great is, Jake, you gotta get your folks all to attend the World Cup. Two weeks ago, we had Kevin Griffin on the show. He's getting all of his people to show up. Just from that standpoint, both of those developer groups all in one place for the World Cup, it would be huge for just for you guys to grow and just have that that serendipitous things happen.
That'd be awesome. We can we let's work something out to, to make sure that everyone from that's attending attend the World Cup.
Yeah. I
can't did you go last year, Jake, to the World Cup?
I haven't made it yet.
Okay. So your cofounder was one of the 60 pitches last year, if I recall. And
She was. Yeah.
Yeah. What what I find unique about the World Cup this year compared to last year is we are truly trying to make it, like, the biggest business experiential event with a bunch of people that you would never expect to be in a room, and how can we showcase them all at once or at least throughout the evening. Right? And so hearing that there's, you know, all these these groups that are loosely associated, but maybe don't hang out and getting them to hang out a little bit, that's the that's what we're
tasked with. Yeah. I mean, the thing is so, Jake, you get all your people there in attendance, have a great showing. And, like, back in the day, what like, like, Zach would, there's a big building down the street from where Zach was located at Hatch called Dominion, and, they would they would give Zach some cheddar every year because of the talent that Zach would bring into Hatch. So we bring in some folks that I mean, there there could be a lot of really cool things that happen as a result to, bringing the developer base to the, to that event.
Just like with the school events that you were talking about, how they wanted to sponsor those things so they can get some of the talent, the exact same kind of concept here.
Yeah. You know? And I think we should all think about not only just cross promoting, but how do all of these different components of the ecosystem plug into each other. That's something we've we've talked about with the other groups. Because with the build weekend, I actually see it as a bit of a pipeline to the seven fifty seven collab and the startup studios.
That's one reason they're a partner organization. You know, I've been a mentor through their studios. It's a phenomenal program. I think just due to the the nature and the demographics of the area, they tend to successfully attract a lot of non technical founders that have ideas and niches that they've identified, but there's no one technical to help them build. That's why they usually find themselves meeting with me, maybe they get a grant, maybe they hire a dev agency or they they pay some contractors.
But the best thing for our local startups is to have a technical cofounder on board. And so that's one crucial area where I see some five seven build weekend coming in, and that's something that our group identified as our mission is we are looking to cultivate a density of, not just technical talent because we have loads of technical talent here, but especially the founder CTO, type of technical talent. And so we could be an on ramp to that, and we plug in to say control alt play, you know, if if that group is about just getting people into tech or Code and Chill is about getting people interested, you know, the hackathon is an opportunity to get your foot in the door and learn some more. And then we've talked about putting together, you know, a a weekly opportunity for these folks to continue to to build. And then startup world cup's another one.
It sounds like once you have an idea, once your startup's going, once you're in the studios, like, get everyone onto that platform. Right? I'm sure I'm leaving loads of people out because there's so many groups, you know, but, like, Paul Chin and Norfolk JS and Kevin Griffith, you know, all of those communities, like, play a role in this, and, I think they all flow into each other in different ways.
Little Paul Chin. Haven't heard that name in a while.
What a guy. He He's great.
He, I think, got top three at Start Norfolk three, maybe Start Norfolk four with a company called Eat Game.
Oh, that's great.
A hell of a cook. That kid that kid's a hell of a cook too. He had a little ramen shop for a little while.
Is. I didn't know that.
I missed that dude. He's got long hair now, I feel like.
Oh, yeah. Still a little bit interesting. Nick Cage. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. If you go to Norfolk JS, he he made a whole website that's just JavaScript tutorials that are all written as the, like, the Nicolas Cage movie storylines. Like, you can go to, like, the declaration of, know, Independence one and, like, it's, like, we're gonna write some code to break into, you know, the building to steal the decoration. Like, it's hilarious.
Man, that's great.
Yeah.
Yeah. I he's a good dude. Well, I'll tell you, Wayne. We'll get your folks here. Well, we we are more than happy to we'll do a revenue split.
Any any of the all the tickets that you guys bring to the World Cup World Cup, we'll kick the kick that back into your
Oh, that's incredibly gracious. But, yeah, we'll we'll absolutely either way, just get your your name on there. Let's do that.
That'd be cool. Yeah. Our big thing, man, is just, and Zach and I, I mean, they Zach, they we hear we say this. If we're not tired of talking about it, then we haven't said it enough, but I feel like we never stop talking about it. We just want people to show up.
You know? It just that's the big thing. We wanna fill every every seat in this house. We sow and until we get a thousand people, man, we're we're not gonna stop talking about this event.
Am I tracking on your mission correctly? I I to me, this event seems like the platform for our local startups to gain broader visibility.
That's the big deal, man.
Okay.
I mean, like, dude, we want, you know, we wanna capture the attention of how awesome would it be if we capture the attention of the Googles or the Apples, and they're like, man, this this this scene is popping. You know? We need to invest into this. But it all starts with this initial spark and doing the storytelling aspect to bring light of all this, man. Otherwise, we're gonna be the we could be the greatest thing ever that no one has ever heard of.
That makes sense. Yeah.
I mean, we, so that's a big thing, man. We just this is our chance. One one night, one stage, one group of people all there to, to make the biggest biggest sound, biggest bang that we possibly can.
And to to echo that or to piggyback that, I would just say it's it's not yes. It's a pitch competition, but it's not really just a pitch competition.
It's not yeah.
Like, it it is it there's absolutely that aspect to the event to the night, but never and I've I've seen some stuff decently close, but never have you really had that many different aspects collectively at that size in one room. And, you know, I think we all realize and recognize the talent and opportunity and potential. And it's like, okay. Like Dude. We are capable of doing this.
Let's That's right.
Let's I'm so tired of hearing
That's right. I'm so tired of hearing everyone. We don't have any technical talent in this area. I was like, dude, come to this event. There's 300 of them right there.
One spot. There's 300. Just let's go. I mean, that would be I would I would love to be able to or 500 of them. Yeah.
That's that.
I I feel like the technical talent feel the same way on the opposite side. Like, why aren't these people looking for me? Right. And it's it's if we have to be the the bridge to do the catalyst was trying to come up with a fun word there. I couldn't think of one.
You know? I don't think I've completed my Elevate app today. But the the bridge to to really do that, I mean, it it
could
be just something really special. And
I mean, I think that we're getting there. We're making great, great strides. So, Jake Sure. You may not have heard. We got Tech Night.
That's gonna be happening in October. That's like the Grammy Awards for our region for innovation, tech, and entrepreneurship.
You
know? So, like, dude, this year, the presenting sponsor is JPMorgan Chase. I mean, that's a dude, that's a big company that, you know, for them to wanna pay attention and, you know, and do something here, that's that's a huge thing to see.
11. I looked at that. I looked that up.
Wow. I didn't know that.
So that's a great thing. You know what? And so, like, that's that to me is an indicator. Like, yep. We're paying attention to Hampton Roads.
And when these when these startups become bigger startups as they get into their series b, c. You know? They they need a place that can handle those kind of big moves, those kind of m and a's, IPOs. You know? That that's you know?
So they're they're paying attention. They you they're putting their money where their mouth is, so that's awesome.
That's so awesome.
And not to mention something that we haven't actually talked a lot about on this show over the 266 episodes is that there's something unique that if we were in New York City, if we were where you were for five years in San Francisco, we would not be able to accomplish this. But because we can and are and will continue to, you know, big fish, small ponds, everything, or maybe I get in that, you know, analogy wrong. But that aspect is very unique to actually be able to be players in a place and build an know, for the future. Like, you try and go into San Francisco today, good luck. You know?
Not to mention, you know, you go to Subway, probably, and it's $40 for a six inch sandwich. Like, come on. But, gosh, how much is one egg over there? $19 for one egg, $22 if you want it scrambled. But to be able to literally, anyone listening to this show or anyone that goes to to Build Weekend can literally be developing the future of our community one tool at a time, one conversation at a time.
Like, you never know just from those synergies what can happen from that. And that's difficult at other cities. In our community, it absolutely is is a possibility because all three of us are are living proof of that. You know? In 2010, I was working in TV news.
Two years later, you know, I was starting to do all this other stuff. And then, you know, thirteen years later, I'm meeting you. So, like, it's totally a possibility, and I think that's extremely awesome.
Mhmm. It's it's fertile ground for sure. I think our biggest challenge for me, I'm a a passionate urbanist, which doesn't necessarily mean, like, we need to build skyscrapers. It's just we need to cultivate communities where people interact with each other. And I think that's such an important problem where if we could solve it, we would solve all the other ones.
We would solve political division and inequality and we would catalyze innovation and the loneliness epidemic. Know, if we just made it so that everyone just doesn't stay in their house and get in their car and not bump into other people, I think that's something that would serve us well, and I think that's one reason why some of these other communities, like you mentioned, New York City, are able to grow so much. And I'll I'll just say while I'm on here, like, the a lot of the leadership in the cities in this area, I don't think they really get that. You know, I've heard Virginia Beach, you know, I think it was the mayor or someone was quoted saying in opposition to the light rail, you know, we don't want to build ant colonies along this thing, you know. Virginia Beach offers something different.
By different, they mean suburbs and strip malls, which is actually not very different at all. And they said, if young people don't want that, they can go to Denver. And that just breaks my heart because Denver has such great start up community, and these very same people are saying, why aren't the young people staying? Why aren't the technologists staying? And that that's another problem because as you know, you know, all of our cities, they're they're disconnected.
We have so much water. We literally have to cross water to get to each other. So just doing what we're doing, getting people to bump into each other, and also thinking about maybe building our lived spaces differently, I think, could help this as well.
Yeah. That'll be pretty great. I mean, it's, as we continue to grow these companies, they're gonna need buildings, and we are we are we are it. One thing that I learned, and I wish that I would have learned a lot earlier, Jake, is that, like, for many years, I waited for someone to step up to lead the charge that needed to happen, and it took me far too long to realize that person just wasn't there. And it it requires us to step up and be
that It feels like you're the voice. You penned that piece, and I I was commenting the same stuff on on that piece. I forgot which what was the name of it again? You know the one I'm talking about.
Oh, yeah. The the real reason Hampton Roads hasn't hit its full potential. Something something along those lines.
But Yeah.
We're we're it, man. AI just we just got to the point where it's like, dude, this is not gonna happen, and someone's gotta do it. So let's let's take a big swing.
Someone is you. That's someone's Zach. That's someone's I'm sure all the It's
all of us.
On this show. You know?
I think I
think people might have a hard time hearing this from me just for people who know me from the But, like, it really is not about me. It is really not about Tim. It is about how can we take what our skill is and share other people's opportunities to the world. Yep. Now sometimes that means we have to be loud because people will watch us, and maybe that's annoying to people.
But because people listen to us, we're using our, like, soapbox, our our platform to be able to reach others as well. And it's like, I promise you, at this point in my life, it is not about me at all. It is about doing other things for other companies. And it's like, I, like, I have I I understand a lot of media and attention, things like that because of prior lives. And not prior lives, but, you know, you you
Previous shit.
If we're living in that kind of simulation, maybe it is, you know, pre you know, previous lives. But I understand why some of these things get attention, and I'm very bullish on being loud from the attention of get let people see it. And I know a lot of people are scared to do that for a multitude of reasons. And it's like, how can we just share that their message out so that more people can see it so that it does rise?
And that's the whole thing, man. It's just like, dude and and I agree. I'm a 100% con conscious and and cognizant of the fact that this is not about me either. My thing is is that I want founders to focus on founding. And then because we've been doing this for as long as we have, let us focus on getting the check writers and the investors and the companies here.
But unless we have great founders doing awesome founder things, you know, those two things need to happen. And it always breaks my heart when founders, like, all of a sudden lose focus, and they're like, oh, I'm gonna take let me I'm gonna do a little pivot, and I'm gonna do this. It's like, no. Keep be focusing on being a founder. Get customers.
Generate revenue. Those are the things that we need founders to keep doing. And if if both of us all everybody involved in this party continues to work together, that's what it's gonna take.
Yeah. Because it's not just connecting people and cultivating density, but also cultivating the right mindset. You know? I think that's something that's special about Silicon Valley in particular is that the startup ethos kind of runs through everyone there and and some of the things that you mentioned, you know, about not overbuilding your MVP. Right?
Like focusing on just get something out there, get validation, fail fast Yeah. You know, get your letter of intent signed before you go build the whole thing. Like, these counterintuitive startup principles, the the more that we can advocate those and make them permeate, our community, I think the better our startups will do as well.
Yeah. It's I don't know. I I I certainly don't have time, but it would be really interesting if there was some sort of study done on this region in terms of, like I don't know. Like, we I don't think that we have the swagger as much swagger as we should have. And I think that, like, because we come from a shipbuilding type of area, more blue collar area that, like, don't feel like anything is necessarily owed to us, and we just continue to work hard and not tell our story.
Yeah.
That was the
crux of your piece. Right?
It was Tell that to the people of Pittsburgh.
Well, but the thing is, though and trust me. I like, dude, and I come from the Rust Belt. You know? So, like, Buffalo, Detroit, Flint, Pittsburgh, all the that whole area. You know?
And it like, and we talked about it the previous show. Scarcity creates innovation. They had everything going for them for with the the automakers, the big three automakers, but then, dude, when cars when manufacturing went to Mexico or went overseas, you know, then that created that scarcity. And so now Pittsburgh, they reinvented themselves. So, yeah, it's interesting.
Here we go. Pittsburgh's not going to the Super Bowl again. That's my song.
Anyway What do you think about I mean, don't know. Maybe it as we're wrapping, it is curious. We've not talked about Aaron Rodgers being a I'm just curious, your take. Your hot take.
I'm not saying this on the Internet. But, actually, here's what I will say. I do believe he is one of the top 32 best quarterbacks in the NFL even at 41, 42 years old. And as we all know, there's probably only 20 actual quarterbacks that are good enough.
Where did Russell Wilson go? Is he signed anywhere?
The Giants. Talk about a skill set that is absolutely difficult to be, like, one of 20 p one of 32 people in the world that's good enough to get that job. I mean, jeez. That's crazy. Anyway, Jake, tell us anything about the weekend that we haven't talked about that we should talk about.
That was the core stuff. I mean, it's the pitch here, I think, is really to prospective participants, and I I said it as loud as I can. I think it is just such a tremendous opportunity to, one, come in and experience that feeling of building. It's so much fun. This year, we're using DevPost.
So when you do submit your build, it goes live on a website. You can have a video. You can have screenshots. And my hackathon builds are still on dev posts. So you can link those from your LinkedIn.
You can link them from your resume. I mean, to be able to point to a real product that you built, especially if you won something while you were in undergrad or even while you were teaching yourself to code, is such a great credibility boost. It it's an an incredible opportunity.
I'm gonna throw a curveball at this one, Zach, a little little change. Dude, if there was one place that you could cater from that you know would bring all all the developer folks in because the eats are great, where where where's the place that you would cater from?
Like, which region to source entrepreneurial part?
Well, now here locally, like, and and you knew that it was gonna get there hot and fresh and that everyone was gonna love it, man, where's the where would be the one place that you wanna bring in to
So you mean,
like everybody.
Local? Oh, you're talking for food?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, got you. What what food? Oh, that is such a
good He did a terrible job of announcing this question.
I'm glad it wasn't me. I was I thought he was like, what region are you bringing, No. I'm not. He's asking me about the food. He's asking a much more important question.
Yeah. Yeah. Because you can't yeah. Yeah. Typical beer and pizza thing.
Yeah. We we're going we're going bigger than that. We got we gotta bring in high quality food.
And just because you don't know that they cater doesn't mean that they couldn't cater. So any any kind of food. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, nearby, especially for fine dining, I gotta Chateau Luche is my favorite. Very hard to beat on Granby Street.
Yeah. But you should go to Luche Segundo.
I've heard mixed reviews about Luche Segundo from my friend who works at Dollar Tree. I don't know if they've gotten better, but he he said he didn't enjoy it on their initial launch.
Yeah. Well, your friend needs to reassess their
Reassess it? I I will deliver that message then, because I'm sure it's much easier to get a table at Luche Segundo. What else is really good? I mean, I like Luna Maya.
Yeah. That's that's good.
Yeah. If you're looking for, like,
casual Ned Lilly, that was his place.
That was his place. That's kind
he said he's been there ten thousand times. He actually they have a plaque on one of his seats. Is this
Oh, for real?
I don't well, do you mean was he joking about that?
I don't know. We have an yeah.
Yeah. The pique a la macho there in particular, I would say is my favorite dish. But
So no mister shawarma?
I mean, for, like, fast casual, mister shawarma is definitely my go to. So in the Bay Area, there's such a wide diversity of cuisine. I feel like there's a lot of immigrants for tech and for whatever reason there's loads of Mediterranean restaurants. One of the ones in San Jose, I think Guy Fieri said had the best falafel in The US or something. And, I think mister Schwarma is on par.
Their falafel, you have to wait for it. You know, they throw it in the the fryer when you get there. It takes like an extra two or three minutes, but, their falafel is to die for if you're a fan of that.
Do you know Jared Beasley?
I think so. That's funny.
He runs Astoria. It's upstairs, Third Floor, I think.
Oh my god. Yeah. I just met him. I do know.
I'm pretty sure I introduced him to Shwarma. And I know he does or at least used to do all their work. So he did all their graphics and their website and stuff like that. But if you're ever looking for good food too, he he, like, low key, like, knows everything. He's the one who told us about the donut dugout, which is, 1900 Granby Street down the street.
That. I haven't tried it yet.
Man, we should have left you a donut this morning because we had them today.
Zach got his workout in this morning. He had to carry two boxes of or or last week, he had to carry two boxes of donuts about a half a mile.
Got his workout, and then he just took all those calories right back.
But shockingly no. Like, this was literally 15 pounds of donuts. Wow. I didn't think it was gonna be that heavy. The apple fritters were one pound each.
Unbelievable. I gotta try it.
Yes. You've done it. It's it's unreal. What's up? I'm looking forward to meeting you in person, in a couple of weeks.
Appreciate, all that you're doing for the area. And, you know, when we say, you know, if there's anything we can do to help, please do not hesitate to to ask, to to, you know, to get an introduction to someone or or, you know, hey. Run something by. I think that's, it's important to be able to have that that person to to say, hey. Well, what do think about this?
Like, where where can I get with this? So
100%. Thank you.
Thanks, Jake.
Any last words, Tim?
Dude, I fumbled so bad on that last question. I'm done.
But it was a I think the quality of the question makes up for it, really. So
because it came from the heart?
Yeah. So it's something else.
We'll give you we'll give you a pass this week, mister Ryan. Like, subscribe, download. Thanks for watching. Peace. See you.
Guys.