Introducing hackmind: Berlin’s bet on incubating AI and Robotics. No ideas. No teams. just talent.
We are at the peak of a huge shift in “slow industries”. Healthcare, education, construction and agriculture have all experienced a much slower rate of productivity growth in spite of the technological revolutions over the last decades.
A high level of regulation, inflexibility of operational nature, and general disinterest have slowed productivity in these industries despite the immense potential from advancement in technologies.
These industries should be at the center of process and efficiency improvement not only for the vital role they play in the day-to-day functioning of humanity, but also for the exponential impact on our quality of life by dramatically lowering cost.
Revenue-focused public companies are also famously averse to risk, which decreases the potential of innovative thinking. Their directive is to return cash to their investors and shareholders on a quarterly basis instead of reinvesting in ‘risky’ business models. This is why we don’t see much innovation coming from public companies. On the other hand, we see highly ambitious innovation coming from the private sector in the United States. This is one of the main reasons that there is a lot of M&A in the United States rather than Europe.
If we take a look at the private sector in Europe, where breakthrough ideas should come from, we see the ‘proof of concept,’ ‘business copycat’ or ‘company building’ models. These are companies without vision, reminding us of the dot-com bubble which was fueled by the infamous quote that we all remember.
“forget the details, Just do more deals!”
This mercenary hit-and-run approach to building companies that end up having a bunch of sales and marketing enterprises without any deep engineering capability.
Although these models are potentially lucrative, they do not lead to breakthrough ideas that Europe needs.
We desperately need an environment that attracts and nurtures curious minds to create big ideas and encourage these people to take risks.
This is why we are launching hackmind.
hackmind is an individual incubator that provides the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem for big ideas to be born.
We empower, back, and support dedicated engineers and scientists across the globe by giving them the necessary capital and tools(GPU server, Dataset, …) to actually build the technologies they want to build.
Our goal is to make hackmind the matrix that top talents enter to surpass their obstacles.
How?
We select self taught engineers, graduates, and researchers to enter the program as individuals. Not Ideas, Not teams, Just talent!
For the first 3 months of our program, these individuals are given €2,000 per month, the hackFund fellowship, to develop an idea and find a co-founder. Successful teams move through to the next stage with an additional €25,000 behind them, to build a prototype and undertake customer validation and product iterations.
At the end of 6 months, the companies are given €100,000 as a optional safe note and the chance to raise their seed round from leading investors at demo day.
Who is behind hackmind?
Hello world! My name is Abtin Setyani. Coming from a machine learning background, I see top talents who aren’t given the same opportunity as MBAs. This is why I’ve put in numerous sleepless nights into creating this program to nurture these individuals.
It all sounds quite simple but the reality is that what we’re trying to do is extremely difficult. We ask a lot of people and we don’t expect them all to enter the fellowship. I’ve chosen this mission for the next 20 years(reaching to AGI by then) of my life and I want to crack the future alongside with visionaries people. Everything we’re doing is risky and difficult. We don’t have it all figured out but we’re going to learn and we are absolutely determined to succeed. We expect the same mindset and a unique combination of grit, resilience, courage and genius from our participants.
Hackmind is also backed by angel investors. Dear LPs, if you are reading this thank you for your investment in the hackmind, both through sharing our vision as well as betting your personal funds on what many would see as a crazy endeavor.
Also, I’m thankful to all of the visionary people who support us during this time to develop our vision in launching hackmind.
Who are we?
We are bunch of entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists dedicating our lives and money to cracking the future.
Why is such a program needed?
In the last 50 years, advancements in technology have made the world a better place. We believe the AI revolution is here and it is going to make the world an extremely better place.
You might be surprised to learn that many of Germany’s successful startups have been created by MBA graduates in conjunction with company builders like Rocket Internet, who make local versions of businesses that have succeeded elsewhere. At present, almost half of VC funding in Berlin comes from an international investor. Only 1.3b has been raised in funding compared to 17b in London. To date, Rocket Internet participated in 16 out of 20 of Germany’s largest funding rounds with a limited scope for innovation. Unlike the US, most of Europe’s startups are founded by business people, or as Nassim Taleb calls them “empty suits”.
Not the hackers, coders and scientists, that have the ideas that make them sustain through their hard studies.
On the other hand, Germany’s educational institutions are world class. Labs such as AI labs create cutting edge tech. We want to draw this focus and talent out into entrepreneurship where they can work on their own contribution and create their own enterprises instead of working for giant corporations and becoming a part of the machine.
Without a website nor a tweet, we have received 136 applicants from all around the world with pre-ideas and interests as diverse as fuel reduction with deep learning, deep reinforcement learning for investment decisions on crypto trading, personalized DRL for decentralized stock exchange(super bullish about this one), Intelligent shoes with deep learning, and autonomous flying motorcycles for the shipping industry. We are about that, not incremental changes, biz hype or pitch decks.
How can you help?
Hackmind is actively looking for visionary partners to join the journey. if you’re an industry leader, AI expert, or simply an AI enthusiast — we would love to hear from you. Combining high-tech innovators with industry experts, senior executives, entrepreneurs, and angels, we can drive change.
You can reach out at info@hackmind.ai
When & where?
Our initial soft launch is this month, and our first cohort begins in January 2018.
Our office is located in the heart of Berlin, Germany.