SF Hackathons Show AI Shift
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Sam Parr shares a story about how he witnessed the evolution of San Francisco's tech scene through two different hackathon experiences.
"When I lived in San Francisco from 2012 to basically 2020-2022, it was all about Airbnbs, Tesla, and Uber. We had Sidecar back then where it was like 'Holy crap, we're gonna get into a stranger's car!' This was so exciting and new. You'd go to hackathons and people were working on meal delivery services.
I went recently, about a year ago, and I was walking around the Ferry Building. This kid recognized me and said 'Oh Sam, I like the pod.' I said 'Hey what's up?' and he told me 'I'm doing a hackathon right now in the Ferry Building upstairs. Do you and your wife want to come up and see what's going on?'
We went up there and it was so invigorating. We used to do these exact same things but it was around the sharing economy. I was talking to people about what they were building, and everyone was doing AI stuff. I remember thinking 'This is like the renaissance - there's something really really cool going on.' It was magical."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.