Harvard Isn't Harvard, YC Isn't YC

Lately we've been chewing on one question: what exactly is ha7ch?

Not a business-model question. Not a fundraising-story question. Just very plainly: what are we actually building?

China has a massive number of mid-sized companies. Dozens of people, hundreds, sometimes several hundred. The operations are already too complex for Excel, but they can't afford a traditional software vendor.

Before, they had two options: drop several million on a custom platform, or keep grinding it out by hand. So entire industries got stuck in a “semi-digitalized” limbo.

Then AI native coding showed up. Claude Code, Cursor, vibe coding... they crushed the cost of writing software to a level no one would have dared to imagine. Suddenly a lot of needs that “weren't worth doing” were worth doing.

That was the opportunity we saw first. But later we realized it might only be the surface.

We suddenly clicked on something: the core of ha7ch might not be software at all. It's filtering people.

Today's college students aren't short on tutorials, courses, or Hackathons. What they're short on is the first real entry into the real world. The first time they realize:

“Wait, what I built is actually being used.”

“Wait, a system I made actually saved a company money.”

“Wait, I can make my first real money off my own skill.”

After a Hackathon ends, the project never gets opened again. A real company is different. A real company yells at you every day, chases you every day, says there's a bug here every day, says the flow is wrong every day. And precisely because of that, you actually enter the real world.

So ha7ch isn't a bootcamp. It's a funnel for AI native builders. We keep filtering: who can actually communicate, who can actually walk into a company, who can actually understand the business, who can actually deliver, who can actually finish.

A real builder isn't just someone who can write code. A real builder is someone who can turn the mess of the world into a system.

A lot of people ask: “Are you guys handing money to top college students?”

No. Handing out money has no meaning. What matters is letting them earn money for the first time. That feeling is completely different.

The moment someone realizes “holy shit, I actually made money doing this,” their worldview shifts. And the shift is irreversible.

A lot of people never get into that state in their whole life. They only live inside the GPA, grad-school, internship, offer, ranking game. The real world has another game. Some people are wired for research, some for enterprise, some for starting things, some for 0-to-1, some for 1-to-100.

Jack Ma wasn't Tsinghua's top student. Not everyone has to become the top of the academic ladder. What matters is: have you found your own battlefield?

Then we figured out one more thing: why do some organizations end up so strong?

Not the courses. Not the office. Not the logo. It's the people inside.

Why is PayPal Mafia strong? Because that group later scattered across the Valley and built Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir. Why is YC strong? Because it keeps filtering founders, and the alumni network keeps compounding. Why is Harvard, Harvard? Because inside Harvard is that group of people.

Without those people, Harvard isn't Harvard.

So we increasingly think: the truly valuable thing isn't code. It's who you pulled all-nighters with, who you shipped projects with, who you failed with, who you raced a deadline with in a rented Shenzhen apartment. These relationships stay with you for years and years.

Honestly, we haven't figured out what ha7ch finally turns into. But one thing is getting clearer: it doesn't necessarily need to be commercial, at least not at the start.

The moment you stare at monetization from day one, you start unconsciously doing “things that make money” instead of “the right things.” What we want is to gather people first, let things happen first, let young people enter the real world and get results first.

It's more like a hybrid: a community of AI native builders, a filter, a real-world training ground, a resource network for young people.

If we have to analogize, it's closer to early YC. Not a commercial product but a mechanism. Its value isn't in a revenue report. It's in the people who walk out of it.

“I came out of ha7ch.” We hope one day that sentence carries weight.

A lot of people like to argue these days about whether AI will replace programmers.

But we increasingly think the truly hard-to-replace ability is a different one: can you talk to the boss, can you read a business workflow, can you walk into an unfamiliar industry, can you take the chaos, can you marshal resources, push things forward, land a vague requirement into something real.

AI has a hard time replacing these. And this might be the most important ability for the next generation of builders.

What ha7ch wants to do is actually simple: use the real world to filter out the next generation of AI native builders.

Monetization, later.