all right. Thank you so much For 20 into forward Thinking Founders, this is the podcast will be highlight. Undiscovered talent. We're scanning. Why Combinator, Pioneer Product Hunt, Twitter, Indy hackers, all these different networks to find really interesting founders and interesting projects and start ups. And we feature them on the podcast before you've probably heard of it. Any of them. And that's what's great about this is you get to follow along on the return as they become more and more successful and say I knew them when So thank you so much opportunity in the forward thinking founders. And let's get into our next founder You haven't heard of. But you will. All right, How's it going?

Everyone? Welcome to another episode of forward thinking founders. Or we're talking two founders about their companies, the visions of the future and how the two collided. Today, I'm very excited to be talking to Swift, who is the creator of major league hacking, also known as Emma Leach Swift. Welcome to the show. How's it going?

Good. Awesome. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah, Thanks for coming on. I have heard a lot about different hackathons that are in this, like network of M L H. And it's cool to just, uh, don't learn a little more about it and let the listeners learn. So I guess for people that don't know what major league cockiness do, you give us an idea of what, Emma leeches and kind of a little bit of the origin story of why you started

it? Yeah, of course. So Major league hacking is an organization whose mission is to empower hackers. When we say hackers, we mean developers, designers, makers, I'm technologists. In general, when people like to solve problems with technology, we organize events and create content and help facilitate communities for these hackers all around the world. And I think we're probably most well known for is all of the hackathons that we help put on on university and high school campuses all around the world. For those of you who don't know what a hackathon is, it's basically a weekend long invention competition. So we get a bunch of developers, designers and,

you know, it is amazing hackers into a room. Together, they come up with crazy ideas, things like websites, robots, mobile APS, anything you could imagine, and then they bring it to life Over the course of that weekend. It's super collaborative, super learning focused. They are structured like competitions, but I'm often people coming out to Hackathons. We're looking to learn new skills or build a professional networks things like that for a sense of scale. We're doing about 200 to 250 of those weekend long competitions every every single year. And then on top of that,

we're doing another 1000 to 2000 workshops, Meetups conferences. Hack is all around the world as well. So in total, all the people in the village community who came out last year was about 100,000 fel in person coming out. Um, the way that I got into this, actually, I was an aspiring lawyer when I was in high school, and the time came to go off to university, and at that point I had actually been moaning ones and, well, my friend rope working restaurant says, I got to pay my bills and I realized that I was gonna need a new job when I went off to university because I would have brought along more with me to a dorm room. I'm pretty sure my roommate would have strangled me in my sleep. So I went on the university's job board,

sort of the jobs by how much they paid and applied for every single job that paid the most indiscriminately. One of the jobs that end up writing back to me was actually a programming gig, but I'd never program before in my life. And I went in and I told them that, you know, I'd never, never really done it before. But I loved computers and was super hungry to learn, and I would come in there every day and do my best to figure it out. And they took a chance on me and I worked that programming job for two years ago. I was in school, but I never really told anybody about it. None of my friends were programmers, and I want to be a lawyer. And just back then, start ups weren't really cooler thing,

and it just didn't seem. I got something for me so fast forward a couple years, and, uh, one of my friends found out that I programmed, and he came running to my room and said Uh, hey, I'm going to this thing called a hackathon tomorrow. You should come with me. And it sounded like, you know, something that elite programmers did, right? Like, come up with these amazing ideas and bring them to life in such a short period of time. But he convinced me to go,

and I walked into this room at N Y U in New York City. And there are about 100 other students who had given up their weekends of doing all the things you do in university to basically get together with this group of strangers and bring these amazing ideas of life. And I had never seen anything like it before. I stayed up all night trying to build a mash up of Facebook and drop box is gonna be like a file sharing network for you and your friends and my funds story for that is I accidentally locked myself out of my own project and couldn't even demo it at the end. But I went home and I was, you know, super tired from being up all night And, uh, you know, crashed went to sleep. And the next day, when I woke up I woke up, I looked myself in the mirror and I said that was the greatest experience of my life. Forget being a lawyer. I'd rather be a developer. And so I switched into computer science and started going to every hacker thought I could get my hands on.

And back then that was few and far between. And I got really fortunate where actually started my first company while I was a student, and I was software to help people run Hackathons. And when I graduated from school, I got a job doing developer advocacy for this company. Send grid. Then there was a P. I, A writer to help people send email on notifications from their applications. And so then I became a sponsor and facilitator of Hackathons and actually organized view myself, too. Ah, a few years after doing all that, I felt like I was ready to strike it on my own and look for a role that you know where I could work for myself to make a big impact on lots of people. And I quit my job and frankly, I found myself pretty depressed.

Honestly, I had lost this connection that I had to this community that had changed my life. It was no longer a student, so I couldn't really participate in the student events that I loved. And I wasn't a sponsor anymore. I'd left my job and, uh, I didn't really have. I was in the process of actually going through acquisition for my last company. And so I just felt like I was missing something. And, ah, close friend of mine. We were talking about that, and he actually suggested that I start, you know,

working with all of these upcoming student hackathons to help them, you know, grow and continue to thrive and bring more developers out to them. And I thought that was a pretty interesting idea for a side project. And so majorly hacking was born from that. And I basically worked on it for about six months as a side project while I was trying to start another company on the side. And I remember this moment that I said to work on a full time because I had just gone on vacation. Andi came back at the end of semester, and, you know, the first Mr we'd worked with maybe five events and had maybe 1000 people come out to all of them. And when I opened my in box after being away, I had applications from about 30 schools that I want to be a part of this thing. And so at that point, I knew that it was, you know,

obviously something that was bigger than I had ever imagined and was making a huge impact on lots of people. Yes, I start working on Emily's full time. That was back in 2013 when I started the company. And here we are coming up on our seven year mark and, ah, today we've obviously grown quite a bit and are doing a lot of interesting things at all kinds of different facets. But that's kind of how it came to be.

Yeah, that's an awesome story. And I've been thio multiple of hack of the hackathons on this network. And for those listening, um, I mean, what Swift is saying is exactly right. These even me is a very, you know, at the time, I was a bad developer. Now I'm not even a developer. But when I did dio like these, like everyone, the creative juices and the smarts of all these people just getting together. Build something crazy, Cool for the future.

The energy is just contagious. And like I will say, like your reputation, you know, And and Emma Leach is like pretty like it's pretty like epic for all these, you know, hackers in college, so good on you for, you know, building what you've built. Additionally, you mentioned that as a recent u um, you know, you work on different things with an M. L. H and one of one of these projects. One of these products that you've built is something in reaction to what's going on in the world in lost like months with Corona Virus called the called the Career Fest. I'd love to hear a little bit what career fast is, and you know how it might be able to help some students who aren't at school right now, which is pretty much everyone.

Yeah, totally. So Emily is actually a lot more broad than the work we do in hacking. I don't really like the way we think about the organization. We think about it as a lifestyle brand for hackers, regardless of where you are in your career. as engineer, Whether that's day zero or you know, and you're just learning to code or your you know, 10 years in and you're looking to to hire and build your first team major, we happen to be an organization that you can come back to to find the educational resource is the community and the network that you need to succeed on DDE. We're always looking for ways to support our community and whatever capacity they need our support and help, and one of the things that people often go to our events for is actually build their resume and connect with potential employers and to get themselves ready to find an internship or a full time job, you know, In fact, that's one of the major motivating factors for me. When I went to Hackathons back as a student,

it was a way for me to both develop my skills, but also to find potential companies that I might want to go work for, and actually my first job out of school. I got from somebody that I connected without a hackathon, which is a very, very common story for lots of people in our community these days, and so recently. We've always have been hearing that a lot of students have been negatively impacted by the Corona virus outbreak, and obviously, as you imagine, it's making such a negative impact on a lot of people all over the world. But we have major league hacking, you know, we're listening to our community and the things that they were struggling with. And one of the biggest concerns we heard was that there are a lot of people who have been counting on internships over the course of the summer that that was now in jeopardy. So either internship programs that it canceled due to concerns around coronavirus or potentially there were a number of career fairs that were scheduled happened during the spring.

And obviously those didn't take place because people were on caps to them and and I was you couldn't get in person. And so we is majorly hacking said, What can we do to help support these people? And we decided to host what we're calling it. The Village career pressed. So it's ah, basically an online version of a career fair that's designed to create that same warm, fuzzy feeling that you get from meeting somebody in person, but for virtual media. So the way it works is gonna run from April 6th, attend Any student can sign up to participate in the the Career Fest, and we'll do our best to match them with recruiters who are looking for students that meet the kind of criteria that the students are also looking for. So optimizing the conversations that people do have so that they're both rewarding in terms of building your network and meeting somebody awesome but also fulfilling in the sense that you know they're able to talk about to relevant candidates or relevant companies that are meet the criteria. But they're looking for eso We already have over 1200 students signed up to participate, which it was pretty incredible. We've been really impressed with all of the out,

up from the students and and how much they need this. And, yeah, we're getting ready to start matching people on the six, which is Monday next week. But they'll get matched up over an hour block with a series of recruiters, or they could have five minute conversations with those companies on, and if there's mutual interest at the end of them. We connect him after the fact that they couldn't take the conversation forward and hopefully find a job or internship to support in this summer.

Yeah, that's awesome. And it's crazy that you already have 1200. It just shows wth E. And it just shows the impact that you that you have around, you know, universities and beyond everywhere. I'm kind of I've been thinking about how to freeze this question, and I don't exactly know how is I'm just gonna give it a shot. So you started this. You know, you got involved with all of this when you were in college, and then you Ah, um, you are now not in college and you're getting older. But you're still working with these super ambitious smart, you know,

young college students. And I'm actually have a very relatable experience with something. Something else that I'm doing. I'm kind of wondering what have you learned about it, You know yourself. Or call her students about just like the world of just like working in this market, which is pretty niche overall, although you are dominating the news pretty well. Like, what are the things that you've learned as you've kind of gone on this journey and got in a little older. Yeah,

that's a great question on I think you know, the things that I've learned honestly are things I wish I had known when I was a student hacker myself, I think a lot of it is about the creating a structure, an environment where you can do your best work. Whether that's, you know, you're trying to learn a new skill or build the connections of people. Or, you know, maybe you're even working from home, right? Like something like that. It's very relevant right now. But a lot of is about figuring out the environment and people and type of work you want to do to facilitate regional of your goals right over me. I don't have never experienced anything like the hackathon that brought together so many people to collaborate and work on solving problems in such a short period of time, and I found that it was a great environment for me to really level up. Try all these new technologies and things that I had never tried before to work with all kinds of different people throwing throughout my network as well as you know,

people I just met that same weekend. I mean, I really got to build a lot of, um, support network. I rely on today very heavily through that community. I also gained a lot of skills and learned a lot of things that have, you know, supported me much later in life. And so I think the hack a thon environment, really, you know, worked like that for me. I think it works really, really well for a lot of students clearly right, Like the demand for these events,

you know, continues to rise much faster than we can ever keep up with every single year. But I think you know the flip side as well. There's the right environment for all kinds of work, right? And, you know, I think a hard lesson to learn that I, you know, took me a while to get to that. Maybe it was valuable insight that I get from talking to all kinds of students all around the world is that everybody needs to figure out that environment for them. And whether that's a small group appears that you I can collaborate with an interesting projects or large events where you come out to get motivated to learn. It's really about finding, you know, the people in this space, that kinds of tools that you use to do your best work. And I think I would have optimized for that a lot earlier in life if I would have known that. You know what I know now?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, a degree is well from some of the stuff that I've learned, you know, since building stuff in college, in high school and now a little bit older. I love to hear, like you built It's hard to put into words like and I can't put into words kind of with the type of brand that you have, but I think one word I could describe is just power. Like I see the M l H sticker and every coffee shop around, you know, around um you know, around S u N s u like not even like a huge hacker school like your brand is everywhere. And you are You're kind of building on the base of something big would love to hear, you know, what direction are you rolling in and like,

What's the vision? You know, if you if you had to look out 10 years, 15 years even longer. If you want. What does major league hacking look like? You know how many people does it touch wood? Let's adjust your television a little bit. Yeah,

it's a great question. And, you know, honestly, I think the way we always talk about that vision is through a narrative of how somebody might engage with major league hacking. So we always imagine a student who starts in high school and they don't really know what they want to do with their life yet. But they're excited about a lot of things, and there's a lot of opportunity ahead of them, and they probably rely on their close friends to, you know, help them figure out interesting things in the world to explore and look at. And one day a friend tells them about this thing going on, called a hack on, and they decided to go and check it out, and they get their first taste of our community. They walk into a room with hundreds of other students from high school, their own high school as well as high schools all around the region.

They're inspired to learn, you know, maybe some basic coding. Maybe they pick a python that day or learn to build their first website and they go home and they're like, Wow, that was amazing. So they didn't start going to club meetings. They realize there's a technology club at their school, that major league hacking is providing the curriculum for us. Well, and they start meeting students from all over the world who care about the same things they do, collaborating with them on projects, tuning into content together, live streams, reading tutorials and blog's working on sample APS all kinds of things that major league hacking is producing When they go off to college, they pick their university based on where the best hackers are and where they're gonna get the most value out of working with those people.

They go to hackathons all throughout their career. They find their first job through hackathons. They find their first internship. They make close friends. Maybe they started company with people that they met at Hackathons, working with them in our community. And then when they graduate and they get that first job, they come back to mentor and work with other hackers as well. And eventually, when it's time for them to build their own team, they come back. When they hire people right out of that same community, it really is an ecosystem play. It's focused on helping people at all stages in their careers find the tools and resources that they needed to be successful. And, you know,

fundamentally, when I think about that, I think again is a lifestyle brand. For hackers, right, like, this is the place you should keep coming back to again and again, no matter where you are in your career, to find those tools that you need to be successful. And I think you know, there's a long way to go between where we are today and and where I think we can go. Last year we reached about 100,000 people in person, but obviously you made a much larger impact virtually as well. I think one exciting thing that's gonna have to change this year is obviously we're gonna need to figure out ways to reach our community digitally and to expand the ways that we're able to support them when they may not be able to exist in the current and purse environment that we've been relying on for years, right? And so I think this is definitely a growth opportunity for us and our community.

And we're already seeing that with lots and lots of cool digital hackathons and demos and meet ups and all kinds of things that are taking place now in line. And I think that Ah, our long term vision for Emily has always been to power millions of people here. And I think that this is definitely a unique opportunity for us to really try some new means and methods of reaching in our community and helping them. And yeah, I think long term, I'd love to see M o h b a really key part of ah, you know, the injuring journey for every engineer in the world. Honestly, Andi, I think that's kind of the way we think about it.

That is a hell of a vision and very well articulated. That's that's awesome to hear in Hee a couple of sentences because we're running low on time, it can you it let the audience know who always knows. This question is coming. What is the way that the forward thinking founders community can support you. And you know what doesn't ask that you might have that someone listen, you might be able to help you out with.

Yeah, I think one of the most immediate asks right now is if you're looking for amazing technical talent, whether it's interns, new grad hires, we would love to get you involved in the career fest. That's all coming up next week, which is pretty quick. We have so many students involved that we're definitely an opportunity to. I have people who may not meet that window, gets connect with people who are still looking for jobs. So at any point, if anybody is interested in helping to support our community and we'd love to talk to you about it, you're over. That is career fest, that m o h dot io. Um, and right now we're actually giving out free hours.

Anybody who's interviewing actively for roles, but every hour after that is a about $99 we don't eat all of that to ah, the coronavirus Relief Fund to help make sure that people who are negative impact negatively impacted by the outbreak, uh, have the resources and support they need. I would love to get more companies involved, both to help support the students as well as to make sure that we're making as much of an impact in that great causes. We can, too. But beyond that, I think we're always looking for mentors. And people would come in and support our community in any way, shape or form. They love hearing from entrepreneurs. They love hearing from developers. So anybody out there who wants to get involved with we'd love to talk to you.

All right. Well, Swift, you are building something epic. And I'm glad to dive a little deep into this into on the podcast and just appreciate everything that you're doing. So thanks for coming on. Keep on do in what you're doing and looking forward to watching the vision come to light. So thanks for coming on, man.

Amazing. Thanks for having me.

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for turning into that episode. I hope you really enjoyed it. And luckily, there's another one coming up real soon. But before that, I have a couple things to tell you. First, if you're listening to this and you think you're working on something? Who are you? Think you're smart? Hit me up on Twitter. I am at Matt Underscore Sherman. And that is Matt with one t. So hit me up,

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