Jonah Weinbaum joined Hacker House in the summer of 2023 to work on neurotechnology projects. Hacker House Myelin was aiming to develop a wetware computer with $8,000 in funding. Life at Hacker House shifted Weinbaum’s career focus from academia to entrepreneurship.
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This as-told essay is based on conversations with Jonah Weinbaum, a 19-year-old who moved into Hacker’s home in the summer of 2023. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
After completing 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 and joined in the chat. We talked about nonlinear mechanics and exchanged phone numbers.
He invited me to live in a hacker house and work on a neurotechnology project.
Later that day, he messaged me and explained 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 about Hacker House for some time, but I didn’t know it was near campus.
The man I met and three other students wanted to build a wetware computer. They pitched the idea to various VCs and other organizations and received approximately $8,000 in funding through Emergent Ventures and 1517 Fund.
Once they had the money, they rented a house in Ann Arbor for three months. They aimed to hire a few people to work on the project in hopes of turning it into a startup.
He hired me because he thought I was good at physics. The novelty of this project seemed exciting, so I needed a break from just doing coursework.
I majored in mathematics, physics, and cognitive science. I wanted to do something interesting now, not seven years from now. After learning more about the opportunity, I said yes. I moved here in May 2023 when I was 18 years old.
I received free rent in exchange for helping my team with project work.
Myelin House. Provided by Jonah Weinbaum
When I looked for a summer residence, it looked like I would have to spend about $1,500 over three months. A big appeal of living at Hacker House was that the rent was free during the summer.
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The family provided meals and paid for utilities. All I had to pay for was the extra food I needed, but it was so cheap to eat that my bill was about $30 a week.
At any given time, there were between seven and 14 people living there, from Michigan, Washington, Canada, Russia, California, and elsewhere. Some of us had internships later in the summer and left home early.
Not everyone was a student. Most of us were in college, although some were late in their careers. They came wanting to work on and talk about neurotechnology, but it’s not easy to find such a place.
Several of us moved in on the same day, chose a room (I was lucky enough to have my own room), cleaned the house, and had our first meeting about the project and how we would operate. .
Different hacker houses behave differently
There were three teams, each consisting of three or four people. The team started with someone presenting an idea for a team, and those who liked it started joining. The house was filled with neurotech equipment and people working on projects ranging from personalized medicine to brainwave-based object control and biological neuron computers.
When we woke up around 9am, we started working on our project and worked all day until we went to bed late at night. I didn’t do anything else. I was the only one enrolled in summer classes, and I completed assignments during lunch and dinner breaks. I didn’t travel or meet friends outside of this.
Despite its high-tech concentration, life at home was simple. There was a piano played regularly, food in the fridge, and a bed. Some members of the house slept less than others, so there was almost always some kind of conversation going on in the living room.
I spent time researching and shared it with other members of the house.
Our goal was to design a low-cost wetware computer that could be used for edge computing applications (robots, drones, etc.).
I worked with two other senators to develop a new paradigm for wetware computing. We ended up discovering a set of methodologies that were suitable for this project and wrote a white paper about how they fit together. Being close to the University of Michigan campus, there were always opportunities to talk to researchers.
We spent the day talking to researchers, reading papers online, and synthesizing everything. At the end of each week, we announced our progress to the rest of the house.
The community doesn’t end when your time at Hackerhouse ends
By the start of the school year, we looked at our operations from a business perspective and realized there was business potential from the device we were building, a microelectrode array.
When school started in August 2023, we all moved out of the hacker house. I found another off-campus residence and returned to being a full-time college student.
Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to stay at two other hacker houses in San Francisco while raising money for the wetware computing startup I worked on at Myelin. I still keep in touch with everyone I met at Myelin’s house. The community has been invaluable.
Life at Hackerhouse changed my career path
Before this experience, I was unsure which path to take. I was also thinking about maybe getting a Ph.D. Living in a hacker house completely changed my opinion. I’m 100% on my entrepreneurial journey right now.
I was just going with the flow and doing things because I saw other people doing them. I always knew there was a fundamental disconnect in my perception of the future, but I didn’t know how to repair it.
My time in a hacker house taught me how to take a problem and research it intensively in a short amount of time. I could talk about my neurotechnology research over the decades.
My focus has now changed. Instead of going to the University of Michigan, I’m going to live in a pro town in Texas, a town built for deep tech entrepreneurs.
