On February 17, 2015, 60 people on three continents started participating in the first BioHack Academy organised by De Waag in Amsterdam. They could follow lectures that were given and recorded every week. The challenge to the participants was to build their own lab in 10 weeks, use it for whatever they felt was relevant and share it with the world. Pieter van Boheemen, organizer of the Academy, tells us about his impressions.