<commit_before># YC Application

hackEDU's nonprofit YC application for S15.

### Application

**Organization name**

hackEDU

**Organization url, if any**

https://hackedu.us

**If you have an online demo, what's the url?**

N/A

**What will your organization do?**

hackEDU will create a programming club at every high school in America.

We think it's tragic that students who love music can join band, students who
love sports can join an athletic team, but students who code (or might be
interested in learning) have to go home and build things alone. In our clubs we
create communities for the builders (and potential builders) in high school.

We want to create 2,500 Amy Sortos at schools around the country (keep reading
to see who she is and why this would be so amazing).

**Where do you live now, and where would the organization be based after YC?**

SF. SF.

**Email address we should contact you at**

<EMAIL>

**Phone number(s)**

[redacted]

**Please provide an email address for each founder in the organization,
including yourself. Founders must have at least 10% equity in the company. We
will send an email to each founder to fill out additional information about
themselves.**

* <EMAIL>
* <EMAIL>

**Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube video
introducing the founders.**

**Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or
work, that two or more of you created together. Include urls if possible.**

We wrote a script that exploits referral codes to order food and delivery for
less than $2 per meal. We've been using it nearly every weekday since November
to cut costs. 

https://github.com/zachlatta/2-dollar-dinosaurs

**How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any
of the founders not met in person?**

We've known each other since September 2014 (6 months) have been living
together since November. We met after a mutual friend introduced Zach, who had
just won PennApps, the University of Pennsylvania's hackathon, to Jonathan, who
was a former lead organizer of PennApps.

**How far along are you?**

We ran a pilot last semester with 25 schools and reached 1000 students. This
week we onboarded an additional 13 schools, expanding our reach to 1300
students. 32% of our members are female (nearly 2x national average) and 37%
are minorities in tech (7x national average).

At MHacks V and PennApps X, the two largest collegiate hackathons with >1000
attendees flown in from schools including Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, half of
the winning teams were led by high school students. All of the winning high
school teams were led by a hackEDU hacker. 

Running a programming club has been such an empowering experience for Amy
Sorto, one of our club leaders from New Jersey, she decided to put together a
summer camp to teach 24 girls in middle school how to code. She's already
secured a blank check from Panasonic, laptop donations from Codestarter, and a
venue in Newark.

Here are some of the things that our club leaders have been saying:

> hackEDU has given me the confidence and resources to lead my club. The
> students in my club have learned many skills and some students have even gone
> to hackathons and won prizes! It is an incredible feeling to know that I am
> making a difference in my school and community.

<NAME>  
Junior at Elizabeth High School  
Elizabeth, NJ

> This is my club's first year and it's been leaps and bounds better than
> expected. Over the course of the year our more than 80 members have made games
> and websites, participated in hackathons, and have volunteered at a local
> middle school for their hour of code. I started my club after talking to the
> hackEDU guys and can say it wouldn't be a reality if they weren't around.

<NAME>  
Senior at Mundelein High School  
Mundelein, IL

> Leading a hack club in Austin allowed me to start a technology community at my
> high school and make great friends while learning tons.

<NAME>  
Junior Austin High School  
Austin, TX

> hackEDU has connected me to a network of people who have years of experience
> in the domain that I'm in. They have connected me to people and more over
> ideas on how best to do what I do, to inspire kids to build the next
> generation of technology.

<NAME>  
Junior at Cranbrook Schools  
Bloomfield Township, MI

**If you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and
how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?**

We've been working on hackEDU full-time for 5 months.

**Which of the following best describes your progress?**

* [ ] Nothing Built
* [ ] Sketches
* [ ] Mocks / Renderings
* [ ] Prototype
* [x] Private Beta
* [ ] Public Beta
* [ ] Taking Preorders
* [ ] Launched

**Do you have revenue?**

* [ ] No
* [x] Yes

**If you've applied previously with the same idea, how much progress have you
made since the last time you applied? Anything change?**

Last time we applied we got the feedback that Zach's age was a worrying factor.
Since then, we've brought on Jonathan (24), to the team and have made
significant progress towards our vision. Both of us are extremely committed to
hackEDU and plan to work on this for a very long time, with or without YC. Zach
does not plan to go to college.

Additionally, since last applying, we:

* Ran our planned 25 school pilot (5 of the original 30 planned schools
  dropped), onboarded 13 additional schools, and reached over 1,300 students.
* Brought on a full-time volunteer and two part-time volunteers.

**If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator,
"accelerator" or "pre-accelerator" program, please tell us about it.**

We have not.

**Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this
area? How do you know this is going to work?**

TODO

* When in high school, Zach wanted a community of other people to build things
  with at his school.
  * He wanted this because x, y, and z (ask Jonathan why communities are
    important).
* He started a programming club to create this community. By the end of its 2nd
  year, the members of his club launched games on the Play Store, won
  high-profile hackathons, founded a web design firm, and secured over $30,000 in
  investment.
* After meeting other high school students who had also started programming
  club, he decided to start hackEDU. Being 17, he is the age of our target
  demographic and has made himself a leader in the high school programming
  community. Zach runs HS Hackers, the largest online community for high school
  developers (Facebook shared a post about it to 2.3 million readers
  https://www.facebookstories.com/stories/112524/building-a-community-for-high-schoolers-who-code).

**What's new about what you plan to do?**

We provide a framework that enables people to start their own clubs without
requiring us to recruit volunteers or maintain partnerships with schools.
hackEDU chapters are autonomous and led by high school students themselves.
Starting a new chapter is just as easy as creating a chess or film club
(generally a one-page form with the school and the commitment of a teacher
sponsor).

When we talked with a former employee of CodeNow, they said that the process of
forming a partnership with a school and reaching its students took 2-3 months
of full-time work. Our model allows us to avoid all of that work and skip the
red-tape and bureaucracy of partnering with schools. This is similar to
Airbnb's model of not having hosts on staff or owning property, allowing us to
scale in-person coding education which is something we haven't seen done
before.

**Have you incorporated, or formed any legal entity (like an LLC) yet?**

Yes.

**What kind of entity and in what state or country was the entity formed?**

hackEDU is incorporated in the state of Delaware as a non-stock non-profit
corporation.

**If you're already incorporated, when were you? If you've had funding, how
much and from whom?**<commit_msg>yc app: improve 'why did you pick this idea to work on'<commit_after># YC Application

hackEDU's nonprofit YC application for S15.

### Application

**Organization name**

hackEDU

**Organization url, if any**

https://hackedu.us

**If you have an online demo, what's the url?**

N/A

**What will your organization do?**

hackEDU will create a programming club at every high school in America.

We think it's tragic that students who love music can join band, students who
love sports can join an athletic team, but students who code (or might be
interested in learning) have to go home and build things alone. In our clubs we
create communities for the builders (and potential builders) in high school.

We want to create 2,500 Amy Sortos at schools around the country (keep reading
to see who she is and why this would be so amazing).

**Where do you live now, and where would the organization be based after YC?**

SF. SF.

**Email address we should contact you at**

<EMAIL>

**Phone number(s)**

[redacted]

**Please provide an email address for each founder in the organization,
including yourself. Founders must have at least 10% equity in the company. We
will send an email to each founder to fill out additional information about
themselves.**

* <EMAIL>
* jonathan<EMAIL>

**Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube video
introducing the founders.**

**Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or
work, that two or more of you created together. Include urls if possible.**

We wrote a script that exploits referral codes to order food and delivery for
less than $2 per meal. We've been using it nearly every weekday since November
to cut costs. 

https://github.com/zachlatta/2-dollar-dinosaurs

**How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any
of the founders not met in person?**

We've known each other since September 2014 (6 months) have been living
together since November. We met after a mutual friend introduced Zach, who had
just won PennApps, the University of Pennsylvania's hackathon, to Jonathan, who
was a former lead organizer of PennApps.

**How far along are you?**

We ran a pilot last semester with 25 schools and reached 1000 students. This
week we onboarded an additional 13 schools, expanding our reach to 1300
students. 32% of our members are female (nearly 2x national average) and 37%
are minorities in tech (7x national average).

At MHacks V and PennApps X, the two largest collegiate hackathons with >1000
attendees flown in from schools including Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, half of
the winning teams were led by high school students. All of the winning high
school teams were led by a hackEDU hacker. 

Running a programming club has been such an empowering experience for <NAME>, one of our club leaders from New Jersey, she decided to put together a
summer camp to teach 24 girls in middle school how to code. She's already
secured a blank check from Panasonic, laptop donations from Codestarter, and a
venue in Newark.

Here are some of the things that our club leaders have been saying:

> hackEDU has given me the confidence and resources to lead my club. The
> students in my club have learned many skills and some students have even gone
> to hackathons and won prizes! It is an incredible feeling to know that I am
> making a difference in my school and community.

<NAME>  
Junior at Elizabeth High School  
Elizabeth, NJ

> This is my club's first year and it's been leaps and bounds better than
> expected. Over the course of the year our more than 80 members have made games
> and websites, participated in hackathons, and have volunteered at a local
> middle school for their hour of code. I started my club after talking to the
> hackEDU guys and can say it wouldn't be a reality if they weren't around.

<NAME>  
Senior at Mundelein High School  
Mundelein, IL

> Leading a hack club in Austin allowed me to start a technology community at my
> high school and make great friends while learning tons.

<NAME>  
Junior Austin High School  
Austin, TX

> hackEDU has connected me to a network of people who have years of experience
> in the domain that I'm in. They have connected me to people and more over
> ideas on how best to do what I do, to inspire kids to build the next
> generation of technology.

<NAME>  
Junior at Cranbrook Schools  
Bloomfield Township, MI

**If you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and
how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?**

We've been working on hackEDU full-time for 5 months.

**Which of the following best describes your progress?**

* [ ] Nothing Built
* [ ] Sketches
* [ ] Mocks / Renderings
* [ ] Prototype
* [x] Private Beta
* [ ] Public Beta
* [ ] Taking Preorders
* [ ] Launched

**Do you have revenue?**

* [ ] No
* [x] Yes

**If you've applied previously with the same idea, how much progress have you
made since the last time you applied? Anything change?**

Last time we applied we got the feedback that Zach's age was a worrying factor.
Since then, we've brought on Jonathan (24), to the team and have made
significant progress towards our vision. Both of us are extremely committed to
hackEDU and plan to work on this for a very long time, with or without YC. Zach
does not plan to go to college.

Additionally, since last applying, we:

* Ran our planned 25 school pilot (5 of the original 30 planned schools
  dropped), onboarded 13 additional schools, and reached over 1,300 students.
* Brought on a full-time volunteer and two part-time volunteers.

**If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator,
"accelerator" or "pre-accelerator" program, please tell us about it.**

We have not.

**Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this
area? How do you know this is going to work?**

When in high school, Zach wanted a community of other people to build things
with at his school because he didn't feel a sense of belonging. He started a
programming club to create this community. By the end of its 2nd year, the
members of his club launched games on the Android Play Store, won high-profile
hackathons, founded a web design firm, and secured over $30,000 in investment.
After meeting other high school students who had also started programming
clubs, he decided to start hackEDU to scale the model. Being 17, he is the age
of our target demographic and has made himself a leader in the high school
programming community. In addition to being an avid participant in hackathons
(over 20 this past year), Zach runs HS Hackers, the largest global online
community for high school hackers (Facebook shared a post about it to 2.3
million readers
https://www.facebookstories.com/stories/112524/building-a-community-for-high-schoolers-who-code).
HS Hackers currently has 5,000 members from over 1000 schools, nearly every
state, and over 90 countries.

Jonathan has been teaching programming since high school and helped create the
hacking movement at Penn through being one of the lead organizers of PennApps.
Jonathan realized he cared deeply about empowering others to become creators.
To develop this craft, Jonathan taught the 12 week Ruby on Rails bootcamp at at
General Assembly and most recently designed and ran a 6 week summer immersive
at All Star Code for high schoolers. At All Star Code, Jonathan took students
from not knowing how to code, to building web apps, hacking hardware, and
organizing a hackathon for the top high school hackers in NYC. Zach was the
first person Jonathan met who was as obsessed with this as he was. hackEDU's
model of students teaching their peers speaks to his passion for student
empowerment. That's why he's all in.

**What's new about what you plan to do?**

We provide a framework that enables people to start their own clubs without
requiring us to recruit volunteers or maintain partnerships with schools.
hackEDU chapters are autonomous and led by high school students themselves.
Starting a new chapter is just as easy as creating a chess or film club
(generally a one-page form with the school and the commitment of a teacher
sponsor).

When we talked with a former employee of CodeNow, they said that the process of
forming a partnership with a school and reaching its students took 2-3 months
of full-time work. Our model allows us to avoid all of that work and skip the
red-tape and bureaucracy of partnering with schools. This is similar to
Airbnb's model of not having hosts on staff or owning property, allowing us to
scale in-person coding education which is something we haven't seen done
before.

**Have you incorporated, or formed any legal entity (like an LLC) yet?**

Yes.

**What kind of entity and in what state or country was the entity formed?**

hackEDU is incorporated in the state of Delaware as a non-stock non-profit
corporation.

**If you're already incorporated, when were you? If you've had funding, how
much and from whom?**
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