Why I Quit My CTO Job
Five months ago, I walked away from my CTO role at Fundwell.com, a fintech startup revolutionizing SMB lending. After two years of building their engineering team and tech stack from the ground up, I'd watched AI transform our onboarding and underwriting processes from manual review to automated decisions. Using AI in these processes allowed us to reduce the time to onboard a new customer by 83%. The technology was incredible but I realized I was watching the AI revolution from afar.
This wasn't an easy decision. I'd never worked for myself before, never built without the safety net of a w-2. But after seeing what AI could do—not just chatbots, but systems that could reason, plan, and execute complex workflows—I knew I had to be part of building this future. The thesis was simple. Become the best at deploying AI to production in a world with increasing demand but few experienced practitioners.
I needed to understand this technology at its core, to be where the frontier of AI is. So I left everything stable behind and moved to San Francisco, trading my CTO title for a room at Pangea hacker house and a hackathon schedule.
My weekends became a blur of hackathons. The Anthropic x Exa hack right after Opus was released. The world's largest MCP hackathon at YC. OpenAI's New York Tech Week (SF in NYC). The AWS MCP hack. Weights & Biases. Each event introduced me to incredible builders and reminded me why I love the builder community.
When I moved back to New York, that energy vanished. NYC has always been the best city for applied AI in real-world industries, but we were behind on the frontier tech that developers were building with. Weekends here feel different than SF as everyone's busy, there's a million things to do in the city. But I've always believed in building the world you want to live in.
Saturday, I brought Bay Area hackathon energy to New York.
Those Who Took a Chance on Me
It started after a WorkOS happy hour in NYC. I pitched mg on hosting a hackathon—I'd been attending their events since my last startup got me deep into auth. He was in if I could get a co-spon
At that same happy hour, Chris Bell (CTO of Knock) mentioned he was speaking on a Stainless panel about MCP at their NYC office the next day. Perfect timing. After the panel, I pitched Alex from Stainless, and he was in too.
We had our sponsors locked in but finding a space willing to host 100 hackers for a weekend proved challenging. Many offices I'd worked with before declined. Then came the breakthrough…
The Perfect Space
At Beeper's iOS launch event, I saw the Automattic office for the first time. I found the founder Kishan Bagaria and learned they planned on launching an MCP server. Later followed up to make my pitch; what better time to release an MCP Server than an MCP hackathon?
Kishan didn't hesitate. Megan Marcel, their office manager, handled everything flawlessly—caterers, office layout, logistics. The Beeper team pushed up their entire MCP server roadmap to launch in time for the hackathon.
Behind the Scene Superheroes
Min from Stainless and Tobin South from WorkOS were my co-conspirators from day one. They jumped on late-night calls to brainstorm logistics, designed logos between their day jobs, and tag-teamed sponsor outreach—often double-replying in threads to make sure no opportunity slipped through. When I was juggling a hundred moving pieces, they were the ones keeping me sane at midnight, reviewing vendor contracts and helping me navigate last-minute crises. I cannot thank them enough for the countless hours they poured into making this event happen—this hackathon wouldn't exist without their dedication.
The Platform That Saved Us
Thursday before the event, I dm, hackathon reporting king, Alex Reibman after seeing him request to join!
Turns out he was in town with the Cerebral Valley team on a workcation. When I mentioned we were planning to use Google Sheets for judging (a nightmare waiting to happen), he offered their new hackathon platform pro bono.
Ivan and Mike, the Cerebral Valley founders, showed up and stayed the entire event. Their team reviewed all the GitHub repos. They just opened a team house in Flatiron, planting their flag in New York while building tools for organizers like me.
Open Source Internet OG Shows Up
Matt Mullenweg wasn't supposed to be in New York, but who better to talk about open source than the guy who built WordPress? At one point, he said he hadn't felt energy this good since the early days of the internet.
That's exactly the feeling we're going for.
What We Built
Yesterday, ~200 (half hackers, half watched the finalists) people could have been anywhere in New York. They chose to spend their Saturday building and testing what’s possible with MCP. Some people flew in from across the world, some were hacking solo, but all with one goal, to push the boundaries of what we know.
Ultimately, this is what I came back to create: a space where builders show up, contribute, and are building the future with the same energy as the early internet days.
For builders, by builders, with nothing in the way. Join us next time!
Check out what the finalists built!
Appreciation and Gratitude
To everyone who made this happen:
Michael Grinich and Tobin South from WorkOS
Alex Rattary and Min KimT from Stainless
Theo Chu and Gabe Cemaj from Anthropic
Kishan Bagaria and the Beeper team
Matt Mullenweg and Megan from Automattic
Anirudh Kamath from Smithery
Andrew Hoh from LastMile
The Cerebral Valley crew
Brittany Newman for the incredible photos (we were on the same floor freshman year at RIT—now she's a rockstar photojournalist for the New York Times)
Charles Henle for the music and also on my fresh year floor at RIT
Every single person who showed up to build
See you at the next one!
Resources:
Automattic's office design philosophy: automattic.space
LastMile's open source work: github.com/lastmile-ai
Cerebral Valley's upcoming Hackathon NYC events: cerebralvalley.ai/events
Event photos by Brittany Newman: brittainynewman.com
Wonderful event!! Great people, great vibes, and lots of insights into the power of MCP!