#DevStories @ GitHub HQ, and Officially Oversubscribed Crowdfund!

But first, shoutouts to our investors of the week: Nader Azad, Ben Forgan, and George Georgallides. We hit the max!

Hey Hackers,

Two great things happened last night:

Firstly, 120+ developers showed up to our Hacker Noon #devstories @Github event, which was the first time 3 of our 8 speakers (all veteran developers btw) gave a dev talk.

And secondly, our equity crowdfunding is now officially fully subscribed! Woohoo! Regardless, there’re still chances to invest some more. I’ll explain in a bit.

Thank you Stefan!

Hacker Noon #devstories event @ GitHub HQ

Hacker Noon’s humble start as a tech blog was a place for the overqualified and under-glorified engineers to share their stories, from the first-person perspective. We’re a place to publish how they do they job: what they’re building, why it’s cool, and how exactly they’re building it.

Thanks for coming, Erick Wendel!

“Too often, the story of the software is framed by the tech executive who doesn’t make the thing. The person who makes the thing is the best to tell the story because they actually made the thing. The writer of code is the dictator of experience.” (read the full transcript here.)

And for us to unabashedly and fully dedicate an entire evening honoring the developers, it was fulfilling, wholesome, and much needed.

Hackers Welcome indeed!

The presenters grappled with questions like: can technology reflect, or better yet, predict human behaviors? how to deal with the paralysis of choice when it comes to design and iteration (pitting time against money to decide effort)? and the duality between “open” & “close” in an inherently contradicting system such as the blockchain? More videos & pictures to come.

Dane showing Hacker Noon 2.0’s emojis to readers :)

People loveeeee Brian’s talk

The audience was ecstatic. Almost 2 hours long, and no one left. After the event, people lingered around for more in-depth conversations, and suggested we do more events like this. And you know what, after this one, we might just.

Lily Chen & Crystal Beasley, 2 of our speakers

Thanks for coming, Jackie Trang!

Our next stop: London — one of our top 3 cities in terms of readership. We are looking for volunteers, sponsors, & speakers for our next event around May/June. Email [email protected] if you are interested.

Switching gears….

WE OFFICIALLY RAISED THE MAX FOR OUR EQUITY CROWDFUNDING!

$1,069,985.71 raised! What a number.

It’s been a long road, but we are nearly there. We’ve now entered a phase called oversubscription of a campaign.

What does this mean?

Yes you can still invest in Hacker Noon. And no, we don’t really have $1.07M in the bank yet.

Even though the SEC’s limit for a Regulation Crowdfunding is $1.07M, commitments to the campaign above the maximum amount will be placed on the waitlist. If for some reason a past investment didn’t go through, space would open up for oversubscription/waitlist investors. The potential investor on the waitlist will have 24 hours to confirm before the spot is offered to others.

For those of you who are thinking about investing: please do join the waitlist, there’s a good chance that space will open up for you.

It still feels surreal to me that we now have over 1,000+ true fans. Thank you for those who’ve invested, spread the word, or simply been rooting for Hacker Noon. The team is hard at work building the best place for tech professionals to publish. And it starts by honoring the OG fans of Hacker Noon (the developers), and successfully moving off a content management system we’ve been dependent on. Any day now.

Until next time everyone,

Linh Dao Smooke

P.S. Got a tech story? Visit Contribute.HackerNoon.com.

P.P.S. Shoutout to our investors of the week! Cheers to those who make it possible for us to build a better tech site:

• Nader Azad, a product manager heading the Distribution Technology portfolio within Disney’s newly formed Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Segment,
• Ben Forgan, a global entrepreneur focused building the future of internet connectivity as Founder/CEO of Hologram and Founder of Magic, and
• George Georgallides is a Managing Partner at Change VC and a co-founder at Darwin.