We have made an effort to make sure that Hacker School is not about startups and products. This is mostly from experience in prior batches: students who worked on producty or startupy ideas didn't get nearly as much out of the batch as students who were working on more technical stuff.

Also, in NYC specifically, we feel that there isn't as much of a pure "hacker" scene. It's too intermingled with the startup world. We're trying to do our part to fix that.