how we built ELTE's data science club from nothing
In September 2025, Kumar and I started the ELTE Data Science Club with no members, no budget, and no plan. I wasn't wondering how big it would get. I was wondering if anyone would show up at all.
By the time I graduated in July 2026, the club had 100+ members, weekly sessions across two semesters, five project teams, a demo day in front of the Dean, and a 150-person agentic AI hackathon co-organised with GDG, with Morgan Stanley, Wise, and ElevenLabs as partners.
Here's what actually made it work.
The constraint that shaped everything
Institutional procurement rules meant we couldn't take outside sponsorship. No sponsor money for pizza, prizes, or marketing. At the time that felt fatal.
It ended up doing us a favor. When you can't pay for attention, you have to earn it. Every session had to be worth someone's evening on its own.
We built the club on usefulness because usefulness was the only currency we had. When we wanted partners for the hackathon, we didn't ask for money. We offered a room full of 150 builders, and they came because the event was worth being part of.
Consistency beat everything else
The unglamorous truth: the club worked because we showed up every week.
First semester was small. Some sessions had a handful of people. We ran them anyway.
Second semester we expanded the core team to six and everything compounded: five project teams, real projects, and students who had joined knowing almost nothing presenting finished work to the Dean.
That demo day is my best memory from ELTE.
What I'd tell anyone starting a student club
- Start before you're ready. The plan emerges from doing.
- Treat constraints as design inputs.
- Find a co-founder, so the club survives your bad weeks.
- Grow the team before you need it.
- Get faculty allies early. They open doors enthusiasm can't.
Why this matters to my actual work
I build AI agents and study where they break. The club taught me the same lesson from another angle: one great demo is easy. A system that keeps working week after week is the hard part.
If you're thinking about starting something like this: nobody is going to give you permission. Start anyway.