Imagine a 2600 meeting merging with a school club to provide a 24x7 venue for stuff you'd see at a HOPE conference or in a 2600 magazine. For a semi-mythological origin story that's not too far off from how it very subjectively feels.
Yet the extension of startup culture is true in a sense of massive participant demographic overlap. Mostly white, highly educated, male, generally hands-off technical background, very young and inexperienced, generally far above median income, overachiever in academic or vocational or artistic or perhaps all three, anti-individualist because its a socializing space, overwhelmingly urban extroverts... A bunch of socializing young java programmers aspiring to learn how to solder could be a startup staff or could be a hackerspace, depending on where they're sitting and who's paying the rent at that instant.
Yet the extension of startup culture is true in a sense of massive participant demographic overlap. Mostly white, highly educated, male, generally hands-off technical background, very young and inexperienced, generally far above median income, overachiever in academic or vocational or artistic or perhaps all three, anti-individualist because its a socializing space, overwhelmingly urban extroverts... A bunch of socializing young java programmers aspiring to learn how to solder could be a startup staff or could be a hackerspace, depending on where they're sitting and who's paying the rent at that instant.