hackclub? more like hack club
·10 min read
Four years ago, I was gonna pay $10 for an online hackathon at my school. I didn't know that, and I was furious when I found out.
I'm very, very stubborn. 4 years ago, I was paying $10 to attend an online hackathon at my school, and I had no idea why. This is the school hackathon that I won like 5-6 times in a row, since 2017 (or 2018). I was annoyed. $10 is unacceptable for an online event. The physical ones used to cost like $50 and it kept increasing by $10 every year. I started creating my own hackathon with hopes that it takes over the school hackathon. First time around, I approached the school a bunch of times (I still have the email correspondences from then). Unfortunately, they saw no point in having a second hackathon, and I understood where they're coming from. Yet, my friends and I ran it online. That was... amazing.
First run of ProgressioThe event I'm talking about above: 2021, online. People were from Romania and India. Amazing. Second run of Progressio, 2022: my school finally agreed to host it. 170 participants, physical, but still costed like $50 :( Third run of Progressio, 2023: 250 participants, physical, sponsored by IMDAA Singapore government subsidiary -- quite cool, but still $25. Last run of Progressio, 2024: merged with my school hackathon, 200 participants, sponsored by DBSYes, that DBS! The bank, completely free for everyone. I loved it. I finally achieved what I wanted.
That last time I ran it, in 2024. That was just around when I started getting involved in Hack Club. The reason I was more involved in Hack Club was because of two reasons: I converted my school Tech Club into a Hack Club club. And when our school blocked monetary sponsorships, we just went around them entirely, running everything through HCB -- lifesaver doesn't cover it.
On the school club end, oh dude. Our first meeting with Thomas -- Clubs Lead at the time -- was incredible. It pulled us into this amazing concept of Hack Club. The letters we received from him was super personalised. He wrote about our GitHubs, projects, and was just super cute. If you're reading this, and wanna see a pic, dm me on Slack! We got our pizza grant, and ran a couple workshops. Pizza grant used to work a bit more differently back then. We just draw a pizza, answer a couple questions and we get 100 USD to run meetings with the grant. We used to grant to buy drinks for everyone (we had like 4 workshops - web, app, pcb, and something else). Every workshop had like 50+ people. It was tough to handle. But, I had the pizza grant so it's okay :P
And then things got real. Fast forward a couple months, I did a bunch of stuff with my club. We had a fundraiser. We started our own YSWS. We had a bunch of posts made for Instagram.
I messaged Jared asking for a certificate (I was in my cert-grinder era, which I later learned was mostly pointless). He was kind about it but didn't have one.
I interacted with him a few more times, asking questions about HCB (since I had no idea how Hack Club worked at the time). Then, Counterspell popped up September-ish. I saw the email, and I quickly applied. I still had that high from holding my biggest hackathon in June. I started navigating my way through the Slack, understanding how it works properly. I answered a lot of people's queries on #counterspell. That's when Dev DM'd me:
"I saw some of your responses in the #counterspell channel, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in being on the Counterspell team for HQ
It wouldn’t be anything super high commitment- so you can still organize your own event
mainly just helping out with answering questions on slack, and through email!
if you’re interested, I can draft out a more formal job description"
He'd sent it at 4am. I read it at 6:45, half-asleep, and whatever grogginess I had was just -- gone. I had a lot of back-and-forth with him. I remember having a call with him as I was waiting for my school bus. Loved that experience. Just imagine receiving a call from someone from Hack Club HQ regarding some paid work. While doing all this, I was just answering more questions on the Counterspell channel. He sent me a contract and wooo that was incredible. I never had a contract like that (just freelanced here and there occasionally) so it was a new experience. I was onboarded with my karthik@hackclub.com email, Airtable access, Fillout access, Front, and stuff like that. I was suggested to use Toggl Tracker but never ended up using it.
Dev was the one who taught me a lot of the things I know about outreach. It started from replying to people on the counterspell@hackclub.com email, and then slowly evolved into drafting emails for Counterspell Singapore, and then I ended up creating my own way of outreach with experience (check out my guide). It started small -- just replying to emails, following his lead. But somewhere between drafting my tenth sponsor email and getting my first "yes", I realised I'd actually figured out my own way of doing it.
While organising Counterspell globally, Counterspell Singapore was also executed decently. We got some amazing sponsors like Google, TikTok, and even Riot Games. The global winner was even from Singapore! Tongyu and kl, your work easily deserved that win. Remedy Renemy was sooo cool. Counterspell Singapore, of course, had its flaws such as poor participant engagement but I think I've learned to improve on that. I just used to find it really hard to interact with participants meaningfully at that time. That was the end of Counterspell for me.
December 2024, I started messaging Jared increasingly. I messaged him about Toolbox, and a bunch of my ideas -- some of which made sense, some didn't. I was super fixated on personalisation in Clubs. I still am. It was what made me continue to be part of Hack Club. Then, I managed to speak to the Phantom Sans creator and get it available for all clubs. That caught a bunch of eyes. The creator was so nice to allow it. While doing all this, I kept throwing ideas regarding alumni and personalisation at Jared. I offered my help a bunch of times as well. Looking back at the messages, I do think I was a bit of a nuisance 💀
Following this, I applied to run Swirl if I'm not wrong (which was called Boba II at the time). I got rejected. But, I don't blame anyone for that. It was just because it was competitive. I get it. Regardless, Jared and I kept bouncing ideas off each other. Eventually, it led to me asking if there's any position that might be available on the Clubs team.
I totally forgot to mention -- while I was doing all this, speaking to Jared and Dev, I was also pushing for a YSWS. I was seriously a one-man chaos machine. I wanted to run Visioneer really bad, and I ended up doing so. I spoke to Espressif, and they were happy to donate 30 ESP32-S3-EYEs, which was AMAZING for me at the time. I was able to run my YSWS without any funding from HQ which made me so happy. Nevertheless, Max was happy and ended up sponsoring Visioneer! I played around with the format a bit, removing reviews entirely (worked on a vote-based system). It was fun.
While running Visioneer, I was also building SimmerAn AI-powered YSWS where you submit a website, get AI feedback, iterate 3 times, earn $7. The idea was simple: build a website, get AI feedback, improve it, repeat. I was genuinely really proud of the cooking dad jokes. The last thing I did before boarding a boat for NS enlistment was launch it at simmer.hackclub.com.
But let me backtrack, because something genuinely unreal happened earlier in 2025.
I somehow ended up in a conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs. Yes, that Laurene. Steve Jobs' widow. Founder of Emerson CollectiveOne of the largest philanthropic organisations in the world. I don't want to oversell it. It was quite brief, and she pointed us toward her team. But I posted in #hq about it immediately. Through this, I got connected with ChristinaHack Club's COO and in-charge for philanthropy. Which led to... a whole thing.
What followed was me going slightly unhinged with outreach emails from my karthik@hackclub.com. I emailed a bunch of people. XQ Institute, Laurene's own education nonprofit, actually replied. Meetings got set up with their team, Christina was looped in. That one felt real for a moment.
And then Garry Tan (founder and CEO of YC) replied to one of my emails and connected me to Harshita Arora, a YC founder and visiting partner. I had a call with her. From NS. She told me YC wants a clear ROI, but was happy to do an AMA. Christina decided to let the Emerson/XQ thread drop eventually. None of these have turned into donations yet, but I don't know which ones will, so I kept going.
The RWSResorts World Sentosa thing also didn't work out. I'd cold emailed Universal Studios Singapore about hosting a hackathon, and they actually said yes. It eventually routed to RWS, and I was in real negotiations with their team about holding something at Adventure Cove, the water park in Sentosa. Full proposal written, Dev CC'd on emails, calls happening. September 2025 call went well. Then December: "we won't be able to support hosting the hackathon at ACW. Moreover, we have renovation works—" Yeah. Still, getting RWS to a point of actual calls and proposals is something.
August 12th, 2025.
I enlisted. National Service - two years, mandatory, Singapore Armed Forces. Laptop gone. No meetings. Free time in controlled bursts.
For the next two months (BMT), I was mostly MIA. Whenever I got time, I'd check in with Jared on club applications, patch bugs in the application viewer from my phone, answer Slack messages. Christina and I kept working together. I'd send her grant leads over weekdays, she'd reply whenever she could. By the time I posted out to my unit, I had about 3 hours free daily. Turns out that's enough time to run a small outreach operation from a bunk bed.
And then recently, I got assigned lead organiser for Horizons Singapore. Thanks Sofia :)
I jumped in immediately. Threw out venue ideas (there's a place called The Glasshouse at Lazarus Island that literally has "horizons" as its view), started a budget spreadsheet, brainstormed names, scheduled bi-weekly calls. Also, there's a potential Google x HC collaboration in the works. Emails are going back and forth. I genuinely can't say more right now. But.
I'm currently in the middle of talks with WDCWestern Digital for Horizons sponsorship. Writing this between tasks.
It's been a weird few years. I started by trying to take over my school's hackathon with some friends. Now I'm coordinating with philanthropic foundations, running national-scale hackathons, and emailing world leaders. I don't really know what I'm building toward. But I love every bit of it. And I don't do any of it alone. My friends, everyone who's been in the room. That's probably the part I'm most sure about.
I'm very, very stubborn. 4 years ago, I was paying $10 to attend an online hackathon at my school, and I had no idea why. This is the school hackathon that I won like 5-6 times in a row, since 2017 (or 2018). I was annoyed. $10 is unacceptable for an online event. The physical ones used to cost like $50 and it kept increasing by $10 every year. I started creating my own hackathon with hopes that it takes over the school hackathon. First time around, I approached the school a bunch of times (I still have the email correspondences from then). Unfortunately, they saw no point in having a second hackathon, and I understood where they're coming from. Yet, my friends and I ran it online. That was... amazing.
First run of ProgressioThe event I'm talking about above: 2021, online. People were from Romania and India. Amazing. Second run of Progressio, 2022: my school finally agreed to host it. 170 participants, physical, but still costed like $50 :( Third run of Progressio, 2023: 250 participants, physical, sponsored by IMDAA Singapore government subsidiary -- quite cool, but still $25. Last run of Progressio, 2024: merged with my school hackathon, 200 participants, sponsored by DBSYes, that DBS! The bank, completely free for everyone. I loved it. I finally achieved what I wanted.
That last time I ran it, in 2024. That was just around when I started getting involved in Hack Club. The reason I was more involved in Hack Club was because of two reasons: I converted my school Tech Club into a Hack Club club. And when our school blocked monetary sponsorships, we just went around them entirely, running everything through HCB -- lifesaver doesn't cover it.
On the school club end, oh dude. Our first meeting with Thomas -- Clubs Lead at the time -- was incredible. It pulled us into this amazing concept of Hack Club. The letters we received from him was super personalised. He wrote about our GitHubs, projects, and was just super cute. If you're reading this, and wanna see a pic, dm me on Slack! We got our pizza grant, and ran a couple workshops. Pizza grant used to work a bit more differently back then. We just draw a pizza, answer a couple questions and we get 100 USD to run meetings with the grant. We used to grant to buy drinks for everyone (we had like 4 workshops - web, app, pcb, and something else). Every workshop had like 50+ people. It was tough to handle. But, I had the pizza grant so it's okay :P
And then things got real. Fast forward a couple months, I did a bunch of stuff with my club. We had a fundraiser. We started our own YSWS. We had a bunch of posts made for Instagram.
I messaged Jared asking for a certificate (I was in my cert-grinder era, which I later learned was mostly pointless). He was kind about it but didn't have one.
I interacted with him a few more times, asking questions about HCB (since I had no idea how Hack Club worked at the time). Then, Counterspell popped up September-ish. I saw the email, and I quickly applied. I still had that high from holding my biggest hackathon in June. I started navigating my way through the Slack, understanding how it works properly. I answered a lot of people's queries on #counterspell. That's when Dev DM'd me:
"I saw some of your responses in the #counterspell channel, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in being on the Counterspell team for HQ
It wouldn’t be anything super high commitment- so you can still organize your own event
mainly just helping out with answering questions on slack, and through email!
if you’re interested, I can draft out a more formal job description"
He'd sent it at 4am. I read it at 6:45, half-asleep, and whatever grogginess I had was just -- gone. I had a lot of back-and-forth with him. I remember having a call with him as I was waiting for my school bus. Loved that experience. Just imagine receiving a call from someone from Hack Club HQ regarding some paid work. While doing all this, I was just answering more questions on the Counterspell channel. He sent me a contract and wooo that was incredible. I never had a contract like that (just freelanced here and there occasionally) so it was a new experience. I was onboarded with my karthik@hackclub.com email, Airtable access, Fillout access, Front, and stuff like that. I was suggested to use Toggl Tracker but never ended up using it.
Dev was the one who taught me a lot of the things I know about outreach. It started from replying to people on the counterspell@hackclub.com email, and then slowly evolved into drafting emails for Counterspell Singapore, and then I ended up creating my own way of outreach with experience (check out my guide). It started small -- just replying to emails, following his lead. But somewhere between drafting my tenth sponsor email and getting my first "yes", I realised I'd actually figured out my own way of doing it.
While organising Counterspell globally, Counterspell Singapore was also executed decently. We got some amazing sponsors like Google, TikTok, and even Riot Games. The global winner was even from Singapore! Tongyu and kl, your work easily deserved that win. Remedy Renemy was sooo cool. Counterspell Singapore, of course, had its flaws such as poor participant engagement but I think I've learned to improve on that. I just used to find it really hard to interact with participants meaningfully at that time. That was the end of Counterspell for me.
December 2024, I started messaging Jared increasingly. I messaged him about Toolbox, and a bunch of my ideas -- some of which made sense, some didn't. I was super fixated on personalisation in Clubs. I still am. It was what made me continue to be part of Hack Club. Then, I managed to speak to the Phantom Sans creator and get it available for all clubs. That caught a bunch of eyes. The creator was so nice to allow it. While doing all this, I kept throwing ideas regarding alumni and personalisation at Jared. I offered my help a bunch of times as well. Looking back at the messages, I do think I was a bit of a nuisance 💀
Following this, I applied to run Swirl if I'm not wrong (which was called Boba II at the time). I got rejected. But, I don't blame anyone for that. It was just because it was competitive. I get it. Regardless, Jared and I kept bouncing ideas off each other. Eventually, it led to me asking if there's any position that might be available on the Clubs team.
I totally forgot to mention -- while I was doing all this, speaking to Jared and Dev, I was also pushing for a YSWS. I was seriously a one-man chaos machine. I wanted to run Visioneer really bad, and I ended up doing so. I spoke to Espressif, and they were happy to donate 30 ESP32-S3-EYEs, which was AMAZING for me at the time. I was able to run my YSWS without any funding from HQ which made me so happy. Nevertheless, Max was happy and ended up sponsoring Visioneer! I played around with the format a bit, removing reviews entirely (worked on a vote-based system). It was fun.
While running Visioneer, I was also building SimmerAn AI-powered YSWS where you submit a website, get AI feedback, iterate 3 times, earn $7. The idea was simple: build a website, get AI feedback, improve it, repeat. I was genuinely really proud of the cooking dad jokes. The last thing I did before boarding a boat for NS enlistment was launch it at simmer.hackclub.com.
But let me backtrack, because something genuinely unreal happened earlier in 2025.
I somehow ended up in a conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs. Yes, that Laurene. Steve Jobs' widow. Founder of Emerson CollectiveOne of the largest philanthropic organisations in the world. I don't want to oversell it. It was quite brief, and she pointed us toward her team. But I posted in #hq about it immediately. Through this, I got connected with ChristinaHack Club's COO and in-charge for philanthropy. Which led to... a whole thing.
What followed was me going slightly unhinged with outreach emails from my karthik@hackclub.com. I emailed a bunch of people. XQ Institute, Laurene's own education nonprofit, actually replied. Meetings got set up with their team, Christina was looped in. That one felt real for a moment.
And then Garry Tan (founder and CEO of YC) replied to one of my emails and connected me to Harshita Arora, a YC founder and visiting partner. I had a call with her. From NS. She told me YC wants a clear ROI, but was happy to do an AMA. Christina decided to let the Emerson/XQ thread drop eventually. None of these have turned into donations yet, but I don't know which ones will, so I kept going.
The RWSResorts World Sentosa thing also didn't work out. I'd cold emailed Universal Studios Singapore about hosting a hackathon, and they actually said yes. It eventually routed to RWS, and I was in real negotiations with their team about holding something at Adventure Cove, the water park in Sentosa. Full proposal written, Dev CC'd on emails, calls happening. September 2025 call went well. Then December: "we won't be able to support hosting the hackathon at ACW. Moreover, we have renovation works—" Yeah. Still, getting RWS to a point of actual calls and proposals is something.
August 12th, 2025.
I enlisted. National Service - two years, mandatory, Singapore Armed Forces. Laptop gone. No meetings. Free time in controlled bursts.
For the next two months (BMT), I was mostly MIA. Whenever I got time, I'd check in with Jared on club applications, patch bugs in the application viewer from my phone, answer Slack messages. Christina and I kept working together. I'd send her grant leads over weekdays, she'd reply whenever she could. By the time I posted out to my unit, I had about 3 hours free daily. Turns out that's enough time to run a small outreach operation from a bunk bed.
And then recently, I got assigned lead organiser for Horizons Singapore. Thanks Sofia :)
I jumped in immediately. Threw out venue ideas (there's a place called The Glasshouse at Lazarus Island that literally has "horizons" as its view), started a budget spreadsheet, brainstormed names, scheduled bi-weekly calls. Also, there's a potential Google x HC collaboration in the works. Emails are going back and forth. I genuinely can't say more right now. But.
I'm currently in the middle of talks with WDCWestern Digital for Horizons sponsorship. Writing this between tasks.
It's been a weird few years. I started by trying to take over my school's hackathon with some friends. Now I'm coordinating with philanthropic foundations, running national-scale hackathons, and emailing world leaders. I don't really know what I'm building toward. But I love every bit of it. And I don't do any of it alone. My friends, everyone who's been in the room. That's probably the part I'm most sure about.