Welcome to the Repo by Reach Capital. We’re an impact VC backing bold builders in learning, health, and work. This is where we open-source raw ideas, founder insights, and startup stories that actually matter. Whether you’re coding your next breakthrough or just want a smarter take on impactful tech — you’re in the right place.

What’s inside

README – The new bar for devs in an AI-native world

Group Project Energy – How GPTZero turned hackathon chaos into a company ethos

Hack of the Month – Meet the team behind RememberThroughMe, an AI health companion

Question For You – What skill are you dying to level up in?

Now Hiring – Internships at Outschool, Newsela, and Campus

README

From Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke’s buzzworthy internal memo to Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn’s bold pivot to an AI-first strategy, one thing is clear: AI is now woven into the fabric of how every company will run.

It’s also rewiring their hiring expectations and the very nature of entry-level jobs. As Wayee Chu, our Co-Founder and GP, wrote in her letter to students entering the job market, the top candidates today are those who show curiosity and resourcefulness in how they explore and apply AI in real-world contexts, whether that’s for interview prep, market research, data analysis, or testing product ideas. Hustle still matters, but smart hustle is what sets you apart.

For developers, this evolution raises the bar. It’s no longer about just crafting code; it’s about collaborating with AI teammates to reshape workflows, products and experiences that were once unimaginable. Duolingo’s content creation process is now powered by AI. A quarter of YC's latest cohort had codebases almost entirely AI-generated. 

As Replit Founder Amjad Masad recently shared in an interview with Sequoia, AI isn’t just a coding shortcut; it’s a foundational shift in how software gets built, who builds it, and where value gets created. The next wave of developers won’t just write code. They’ll orchestrate intelligent agents, compose services across decentralized networks, and design for a world where AI isn’t an add-on, but the infrastructure itself.

His advice? Don’t chase short-term hacks. Build with a long-term vision. Create experiences that remove friction and amplify creativity. The builders who win won’t merely use AI, they’ll co-create with it. 

That’s how we’ll get to a billion builders, and how we start shaping a weirder, more global, more equitable internet economy.

Hackathons... As a Lifestyle? A Founder's Obsession with Group Project Energy

A true Reach portfolio story.

That project started in 2020, when 20-year-old Edward Tian, driven by curiosity, serendipity, and collaboration, built the first AI detection sentence-highlighting model. A tool that highlights which parts of a sentence are likely written by AI. He and his co-founder, Alexander Cui, launched the tool and demoed it live on CNN the very next day.

Two years later, that project became GPTZero, now the leading AI detector. It’s backed by Reach Capital alongside Uncork Capital, Jack Altman, Alt Capital, and other notable investors. As its footprint has grown — today reaching over 2.5 million users — so too has the team.

But the hacker spirit from its early scrappy days still drives GPTZero today. Reflecting on those early days, Edward identifies that spirit as Group Project Energy: the buzz of building something new with a team, from scratch. Spontaneous bursts of creativity alongside unexpected acts of heroism, like when your intern races out at midnight to find industrial-grade lighting to jolt everyone awake and give them the last burst of energy to get the project done. 

"Without Group Project Energy," Edward reminisces, "even the best intentions can feel hollow." G.P.E. is what made GPTZero's best ideas come to life, including their new AI Vocabulary feature that came out of a team hackathon. "Great companies might be mostly built through structured execution — OKRs, roadmaps, organized planning," Edward notes, "but their ethos? That’s built in the moments in between." 

To aspiring founders: structure your goals, but treasure those chaotic, electric moments where real magic happens. After all, today’s half-caffeinated hackathon could be tomorrow’s billion-dollar company. And if you’re doing it right? It’s not just a weekend event. It’s a lifestyle.

Hack of the Month

Juggling school and side projects is hard enough. Add a 24-hour hackathon, and most people would tap out. But you all committed.

Congratulations to McGill University students, Swagat Bhowmik, Uday Parmar, Ayush Srivastava and Mubeen Mohammed for winning Reach’s Best Use of AI Award at ConuHacks in Montreal! Out of 800+ participants and 180+ projects, their RememberThroughMe solution stood out in all the right ways.

In just 24 hours, this team built an AI-powered memory companion designed to help individuals experiencing memory loss reconnect with the people and moments that matter most. It recognizes faces in real time, holds adaptive voice-to-voice conversations, and securely manages data. All controlled by simple voice commands.

👉 Check out RememberThroughMe on Devpost

 Over one sleepless, caffeine-fueled sprint,  this team crafted a tool to help people preserve the relationships and memories that define their lives. Hats off to the team for creating something truly impactful and literally memorable.

If you’re building tech for better health, learning, or work, we’d love to hear from you. And for all the hackers competing for Reach's "Best Use of AI" prize across our 10 sponsored hackathons…Stay tuned. We're cooking up a special opportunity!

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Question For You:

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There are a total of 540 job openings across the Reach portfolio. Check them out here.

Stay curious & keep building,
The Reach Capital team

P.S. Got thoughts? Cool projects? Spicy questions? Reply anytime, we’re all ears!