Last night within the heart of Toronto was the first Toronto Hacker News meetup. According to Zach, the organizer, it all spurred when he realized how many members of Hacker News were from the Toronto area in a post about where the members are from.

I wasn’t sure what to expect last night, but the startup culture that brews from within Hacker News was very well present here and needless to say, it was very inspirational.

First, I talked with a younger hacker by the name of Christopher Olah who, heavily focused on mathematics is not only doing some amazing things for his age, like writing a mathematics book but also introduced me to a great hacker space named hacklab in the heart of the Kensington market area.

Next, it was surprising to see the amount of great startups coming from Toronto. I didn’t even know Guestlist, the wonderfully designed event registration service was from around here.

We also have AeroFS who in layman terms, is building a private, locally-hosted Dropbox type service. They are not launched yet, but the two guys behind it seem to know what they are doing, so that’s something to keep an eye out for.

Freshbooks was in the house, and Mike, who I don’t think was actually there, bought everyone in the room a round of beer as we were informed that they are hiring (Great hiring method by the way!). After talking with many of the Freshbooks staff, it sounds like the best place in Toronto to work right now. They are also offering a $1,000 referral bonus if they hire someone you refer so if you’re reading this blog post and you decide to apply to Freshbooks, mention my name ;)

Zach, the organizer had his own startup in the works, titled Stats Empire it’s going to focus on what Zach seems to love working with best: a lot of data. From what I got out of it, he plans to make A/B testing for businesses super easy, and super awesome with a lot of useful data. Because data is awesome.

Cadmus, which is another tool that Twitter should offer but doesn’t, gives you trending topics based on your own social circle, so if you’re sick of seeing Justin Bieber in your trending topics, check these guys out and you’ll be in for a nice treat. However, if you still see Justin Bieber in your trending after using Cadmus, then well, the owners say you have a problem they can’t fix :) The service also provides an API in which they plan to implement with a variety of clients, and hopefully one day with Twitter’s.

There was a lot more companies and great names flying around in that room last night, but I can’t put them all down here. A lot of bright minds, a great mixture of skill sets and experience, and great discussion all around so if you’re in the Toronto area, follow @TorontoHN on Twitter to keep up to date on the next event.

Zach should be posting a post on his blog soon, so I will link to that when he does, just for references sake.