Why I Built Hi, Bot

I have two honest reasons.

The first is that the programs available to my kid were treating AI like a cheating problem. Either it was banned entirely, or it was managed—here's how to detect it, here's the school policy, here's why you shouldn't trust it. Nobody was saying: here's how to build with it, here's what it actually can't do, here's how to tell when it's lying to you. The relationship most kids are forming with AI right now is a relationship with a thing they use or avoid. Not a thing they understand.

The second is that the next decade belongs to people who can build with AI. Not the ones who prompt their way through homework. The ones who treat it the way a previous generation treated a soldering iron—a tool you respect, learn the limits of, and use to make things you couldn't make alone. Those people are forming their habits between ages 8 and 16, and most of what they're encountering is either fear or hype.

Hi, Bot is a physical place in Richmond, Virginia for kids in that window.

The frame I keep coming back to is a library and a clubhouse. A library is serious about what it puts on its shelves—editorial judgment, primary sources, no junk. A clubhouse is where kids actually want to be: projects half-finished on the table, something interesting in the corner, the rhythm of people showing each other what they made. Most programs are one or the other. Strict tutoring centers make kids dread the chair. Unstructured makerspaces make parents wonder where the rigor went. We're trying both, together, on purpose.

The measure of whether it works is what kids ship. If a kid leaves a year of Hi, Bot with a working AI agent that won a tournament, a small tool with paying users, or something a sibling uses every day—we did our job. If they leave with a stack of worksheets and a certificate, we didn't.

The Builder Fellowship covers full tuition for families who can't pay sticker. That's a permanent budget item, not a marketing line. A short form, a real human reads it, and if we have a spot you're in.

We're starting small. Ten families. One cohort. Getting it right before we get it big.

If you're in Richmond and you have a curious kid, the waitlist is at hibot.space. Everything else follows from getting this first part right.