We do have some like the Homebrew Computer Club, but not (yet) as elite. Kuala Lumpur has some talent, but not the density of talent. I may join once every two years. Every time I do there's a founder who ends up public listed. One even had enough success rate to become a VC, but it's hard to tell which one will be who.

But so far the sales events have had a higher hit rate. There's very talented people joining whatever new thing AWS is launching, or the hackathons.

If anything, founders are good at building things. Hackathons are an excuse to experiment with a new tool for some, a sport for others. I think a lot of friendships today are forged in the heat of the hackathons. I met this guy who wanted to build an "AI assistant" with Gemini, which I dismissed as a dumb idea because Google has been building AI assistants for years. But his idea went much deeper than that and he won the hackathon car.