Moonlighting with Gemini + Exa Event Recap
Clinton
<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="600" width="800" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ilw8!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fee0fc498-07b3-45ef-ac22-b1e264418b00_800x600.jpeg"></figure></div><p>We ran the Moonlighting with Gemini + Exa at the WorkOS offices in San Francisco - an invite-only hack night for researchers, engineers and technical founders, built around a simple premise: you get 60 minutes to turn an idea into something that runs. Most people came straight from a full day at the job that actually pays them (that’s the moonlighting part).</p><p>400+ builders enrolled and 50+ projects were submitted by the end of the night. Google DeepMind hosted alongside Exa, with Vapi, Apify, Photon, ElevenLabs, GMI Cloud, WorkOS, Convex, Mosaic and AdaL rounding out the partners. Six of them set their own challenge tracks and judged those tracks themselves, going through every project that had been built with their tool.</p><p>Here’s what won.</p><h2>🗳️ People’s Choice - voted by the public</h2><h3>🥇 StreetCred</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="787" width="1123" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pdNJ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa1d0e418-8cd6-4ba4-bc5b-e965bac2bbb3_1123x787.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team:</strong> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-v-399b5b200">Alex Velazquez</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-selbrede/">Rachel Selbrede</a></p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://streetcred.thealexschroeder.workers.dev/">StreetCred</a> · <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/0d025c2a0126465db6ea01f97bb74d75">Demo video</a></p><p>Everyone knows a corner that feels dangerous, but “feels” carries no weight at City Hall. The proof exists - it’s just scattered across a crash database, a 311 queue, local news archives and the neighbours’ collective memory, none of which talk to each other. StreetCred scores how dangerous any San Francisco intersection is using the city’s own crash and 311 records, checks whether official data, live news coverage and resident reports agree, and drafts a letter to the right District Supervisor. A feeling becomes a sourced, gradeable claim in about ten seconds.</p><h3>🥈 Learnify</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="575" width="1291" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ahw5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd631eea2-ff1c-498d-81ea-523d88b6c0bd_1291x575.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team:</strong> <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/deon-menezes-a82552254">Deon Menezes</a></p><p> <strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://getlearnify.vercel.app/app">Learnify</a> · <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/840dcb06189042b7a718de8c0f16bb3f">Demo video</a></p><p>Keeping up with research means wading through everything to find the handful of papers that matter. Learnify finds the most relevant papers for whatever you’re working on and packages them as a subscription with audio briefings, so you can stay current without reading the whole field. It also took second place in the Apify track.</p><h3>🥉 Earworm</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="601" width="1074" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1mW5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd27810f-b911-4f46-8470-7b1e2adf29e2_1074x601.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team:</strong> Rachel MS</p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://claude.ai/code/artifact/7139d837-ba68-485a-96d3-4c7fbdca5602">Earworm</a></p><p>Facts that rhyme and scan are almost impossible to forget, but asking a chatbot for a mnemonic song gives you lyrics that don’t scan and quietly invent facts. Earworm turns your study notes into original mnemonic songs written to the meter of tunes you already know, then drills you on them. Every line is written to a syllable target and rhyme scheme with the count shown live, and a second pass re-reads each lyric against your own definitions to flag anything that contradicts or oversells them.</p><h2>Partner prize tracks</h2><h3>🔍 Exa - Best Use of Exa: Six Degrees</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="459" width="715" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Jtak!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F73ce20d5-a64e-42c5-ba16-8001432b6670_715x459.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team:</strong> <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/zhong808800">Jacky Zhong</a></p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/7d98ea3b09e249d7886bb93f7d737011">Demo video</a></p><p>Cold outreach reply rates are close to zero, yet the warm path to almost anyone already exists inside overlapping follow graphs. Nobody can see it. Six Degrees is a crowdsourced pathfinding game that routes you to anyone on X through the real follow graph - the Airbnb model applied to introductions, where strangers open their networks the way hosts open their homes.</p><h3>🎙️ Vapi - Best Use of Vapi: Cater</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="727" width="1456" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lbUk!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd45abb04-8d5e-4224-99f7-b4ace81c2ebd_1516x757.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team:</strong> <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/caok">Carl Okpala</a></p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://cater-gamma.vercel.app/">Cater</a> · <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/28cf1dc54e43481bb0588c5d686635a4">Demo video</a></p><p>Personal injury firms spend heavily to acquire leads, then lose the revenue when calls are missed, answered too slowly or handled badly. Cater is an AI answering service that picks up every inbound call around the clock, qualifies new leads, fills in the intake form and routes high-value cases to the firm before the caller tries a competitor.</p><h3>🕷️ Apify - Best Use of Apify</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="1011" width="1456" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w6d5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda174764-12ea-4bf4-b777-8229fde43136_1512x1050.png"></figure></div><p><strong>1st place: FigureForge</strong> </p><p><strong>Team:</strong> <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/sahiel-bose">Sahiel Bose</a></p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://figure-forge-black.vercel.app/">FigureForge</a> · <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/b5bc7249a2a042999c126f86ae233037">Demo video</a></p><p>Print-on-demand sellers pick what to make by copying whatever’s already trending, which lands them in saturated niches with margins nobody calculated. FigureForge mines forums and maker communities for figurine styles people are asking for but can’t buy, checks how saturated and priced that niche actually is on Etsy (excluding promoted listings, which otherwise inflate the numbers), generates an original 3D model for the winning concept, and prices it against real unit economics rather than the naive “price minus filament” maths.</p><p><strong>2nd place: Learnify</strong> - Deon Menezes (see People’s Choice above)</p><h3>💬 Photon - Best Use of Photon: Phoker</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="926" width="941" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XYN7!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0cb45c8d-4b7f-4fdf-bcf1-ebfb224a14db_941x926.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team:</strong> Timothy Cheng</p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://playphoker.com">Phoker</a> · <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/382cdab46ee44e19a8ccd1617679d8e0">Demo video</a></p><p>Phoker is an agent-native gaming platform that gets summoned through iMessage. Built on Photon’s Spectrum SDK, an inbound text opens a live Midnight Voice Blackjack mini-app card inside the message thread - no app download, no separate client, the game just arrives in the conversation.</p><h3>🔊 ElevenLabs - Best Use of ElevenLabs: Yaler</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="478" width="774" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j2E_!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F71ff33c6-15c6-463a-999d-dc28ad96f0a4_774x478.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team: </strong><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/udi-ngethe">Ude Ngethe</a></p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://yaler.persidian.com">Yaler</a></p><p>A business manager says “the fridge is down, get it fixed before lunch, for under £500.” AI can already search and communicate, but it still can’t safely spend a company’s money in the physical world. Yaler is the control layer between “something is broken” and “it’s fixed” - it takes a mandate with a budget and a deadline, finds and verifies a local engineer, negotiates and books the repair, and leaves a verified receipt behind. No phone calls, no chasing, no blank cheque.</p><h3>☁️ GMI Cloud - “Clouder Opportunity”: redSwarm</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><img height="349" width="1043" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2m73!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F082c4eda-87dd-476a-a6fc-89d132f9480c_1043x349.png"></figure></div><p><strong>Team:</strong> <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/hashirr-lukmahn">Hashirr Lukmahn</a></p><p><strong>Project:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/HashirrLukmahn/redswarm">redSwarm Github</a> · <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/d4d46288a6524409b21a983d28eaaf57">Demo video</a></p><p>Security testing usually happens after something is built, if it happens at all. redSwarm runs a swarm of agents that use your application the way real users would, poking at it to surface flaws and architectural problems while you’re still building rather than after someone else finds them.</p><h2>What actually happened in that room</h2><p>The interesting thing about a 60-minute format isn’t the speed - it’s what the constraint does to scope. Nobody had time to build a platform. What came out instead were over 50 attempts at one specific problem each: a dangerous intersection, a missed call, a broken fridge, a study deadline. Most of them were problems the builder had personally run into.</p><p>To everyone who came, built and demoed: thank you. See you at the next one.</p><p><strong>– Team Build Club 💙</strong></p>