- Jonah Weinbaum joined a hacker house to work on a neurotech project in summer 2023.
- The hacker house, Myelin, aimed to develop a wetware computer with $8,000 in funding.
- Living in the hacker house shifted Weinbaum’s career focus from academia to entrepreneurship.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jonah Weinbaum, a 19-year-old who moved into a hacker house during the summer of 2023. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
After finishing my freshman year at the University of Michigan, I planned to spend the summer on campus working on an independent computer science research project.
A few days before the summer semester started, I was talking to a friend on campus when a random student sat down to join our chat. We talked about nonlinear dynamics and exchanged phone numbers.
He recruited me to live in a hacker house and work on a neurotech project
Later that day, he sent me a message explaining that he was starting a hacker house called Myelin and asked if I wanted to live there and work on a neurotech project for three months. I had heard of hacker houses before but didn’t know of any around campus.
The guy I met and three other students wanted to build a wetware computer. They pitched the idea to different VCs and other organizations and received around $8,000 in funding through Emergent Ventures and the 1517 Fund.
Once they had the funds, they rented a house in Ann Arbor for three months. They aimed to recruit a handful of people to work on the project, hoping it would become a startup.
He recruited me because he thought I was good at physics. The project’s novelty seemed exciting, and I needed a break from just doing coursework.
I was majoring in math, physics, and cognitive science. I wanted to do something interesting now instead of in seven years. After learning more about the opportunity, I said yes. I moved in in May 2023, when I was 18.
I got free rent in exchange for helping the team work on a project
When I looked for summer housing, it seemed like I’d have to spend around $1,500 for three months. It was a big draw that living in the hacker house came with free rent for the summer.
The house also supplied some meals and covered the utilities. All I had to pay for was the extra food I wanted, but I ate very inexpensively, so my bills were around $30 a week.
At any given time, 7-14 people from places like Michigan, Washington, Canada, Russia, and California lived there. Some people had internships in the latter half of the summer and left the house early.
Not everyone was a student; some were later in their careers, but most of us were college-aged. They came because they wanted to work on and talk about neurotech, and such places aren’t easy to find.
A handful of us moved in on the same day, picked our rooms (I got lucky and had my own room), cleaned the house, and had our first meeting about the project and how we would operate.
Every hacker house operates differently
There were three teams, each with three or four people. The teams started with somebody presenting an idea for a team, and people joined if they liked it. The house was full of neurotech equipment and people working on projects ranging from personalized medicine to EEG-based object control and biological neuron computers.
Whenever we woke up, at around 9 a.m., we started working on the project and worked on it all day until we went to bed at random late hours. We didn’t do anything else. I was the only person enrolled in a summer class and completed my work during lunch or dinner breaks. I didn’t travel or see friends outside this.
Despite the high-tech focus, life in the house was simple. We had a piano that was played at regular intervals, food in the fridge, and beds. Some house members slept less than others, so there was almost always some conversation in the living room.
I spent my time doing research and sharing it with the other members of the house
Our goal was to design a low-cost wetware computer that one could use for edge computer applications (robotics, drones, etc.).
I worked with two other house members to develop a new paradigm for wetware computing. We eventually found a set of plausible methodologies for the project and wrote a white paper on how we could see them coming together. Being near the University of Michigan campus gave us constant opportunities to speak with researchers.
We’d spend our days talking to researchers, reading papers online, and synthesizing everything. At the end of every week, we’d present our progress to the rest of the house.
When your time at a hacker house ends, the community doesn’t
By the start of the school year, we viewed our operations through a business lens and realized the potential for a business from a device we had been building: a microelectrode array.
When school started in August 2023, we all moved out of the hacker house. I found other off-campus housing and returned to being a full-time college student.
Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to stay at two other San Francisco hacker houses while capital-raising for the wetware computing startup I worked on at Myelin. I’m still in touch with everyone I met at the Myelin house. The community has been very valuable.
Living in the hacker house changed the career path I was on
Before this experience, I was confused about what path to take. I thought maybe I’d pursue a Ph.D. Living in the hacker house changed my mind completely. I’m now 100% on the entrepreneurship path.
I used to follow the flow and did things because that’s what I saw others do. I was always aware of the fundamental disconnect in my perception of the future but wasn’t sure how to mend it.
My time in the hacker house taught me how to take a problem and investigate it intensely for a short period. I’ll be able to speak about my neurotech research for decades.
My focus has now shifted. Instead of continuing school at the University of Michigan, I’m off to live in a pro-town, a town built for deep-tech entrepreneurs, in Texas.
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