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369 sats \ 7 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 3 Oct 2022 \ on: Hi, this is BOLT.FUN AMA bitcoin
Have you guys thought much on the post hackathon results? IE, team builds something awesome, maybe wins, then all go separate ways and back to their day jobs.
At one hackathon, I was paid by an independent party present there to finish our PoC and write up a case study. But I assume with the heavy hitter VCs that'll be at this hackathon, there could be a chance to turn a project into something real. Is anything done on your side to help facilitate that? Really looking forward to participating, thanks!
You hit the nail on the head most times with hackathons as you mentioned the team split up on the project dies. This really sucks because we hardly get to see if they have real potential.
We noticed that in our previous #ShockTheWeb hackathons also. Sustainability was one of the keywords when we started planning this event.
⁃ You’ll have a chance to pitch investors and even do office hours
⁃ If you’re not interested in creating a startup and want to make an open source public good, we’ve got folks to help you with crowdfunding like Geyser.fun. Actually they’re a shock the web participant, Geyser Grants was built at our first hackathon.
⁃ There’s also mentors for design, marketing, and lightning dev who can help you make your project world class.
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Hell yea! ;)
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As Johns mentioned, we're doing our best to solve this issue with #LegendsOfLightning, creating more of an accelerator rather than a typical weekend-long hackathon!
What do you think we could also do to solve this issue of project momentum loss?
- E
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Good question, and I appreciated Johns answer too, I like that approach. It sounds like the way you guys are setting it up should be supportive of "all the tools are here, use them if you'd like, we highly encourage it" which is great.
I typically do 48 hour hackathons which is completely different but also fun. I can see them being harder to keep the momentum going, especially when everyone is sort of burnt out at the end (at least me). Which probably plays into more the idea of "that was fun, let's go back to our lives" problem. I hope the long running hackathon helps build the spirit of getting something usable and clean that might have a better chance for the creators to succeeding afterwards, both in spirit and ability.
As a lifelong dev that typically does these hackathons with other lifelong devs, it's a very big leap both in knowledge and safety to consider moving the project into the next steps of a serious product/company. Funding, general startup/company knowledge, etc. are typically the bigger gaps of knowledge than actual development. People come from all kinds of different places, but I don't need help creating a lightning app, I need help creating a company lol. But I'm going into this hackathon with the thought process of: what if the idea we work on is great and how will we finally take that leap now. So very excited about this hackathon, even if our project doesn't work!
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We wish you luck with your project and hope it works out 💪 It’s always scary going from concept to company!
That being said, towards the end of #LegendsOfLightning we’ll be offering workshops from grant platforms like Geyser & Open Sats, as well as office hours with the tournaments main sponsor Fulgur Ventures (+ Hivemind VC and Lightning Ventures). So you’ll have plenty of access to coaching in these areas you don’t feel as comfortable in! This is why we want to start wearing the “Accelerator” badge 🏃♂️
With regards to the feeling of burnout, we’ve been there too. We’ve run those sorts of events in the past (shorter hackathons), but that burn out was the exact feeling we’d get - even ourselves. The longer format tournament is designed to do a couple of things:
- Give you more time to get access to any tools, resources, and … well, more time. This way projects can be really focused and be super high quality!
- We want people to form a habit of hacking on their nights and weekends, even if it’s just to learn a new spec or developer tool. In the long run, this will hopefully compound into adding more contributors and makers to the open source space, as well as breeding awesome innovative lightning apps and tools! Habits generally tend to form over periods longer than 30 days, so that’s definitely a strong reason for choosing the long format 🦾
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If the tournament ended at any time other than the beginning of December, that would give teams the chance to raise VC money on their momentum.
Everyone underestimates how checked out people are in December.
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You raise a good point ☝️
That being said, two things:
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This is just the first tournament, we hope to run x4 / year. So this shouldn’t be an issue for the other 3.
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Towards the end of #LegendsOfLightning we’ll be offering workshops from grant platforms like Geyser & Open Sats, as well as office hours with the tournaments main sponsor Fulgur Ventures (+ Hivemind VC and Lightning Ventures). So immediately off the bat the best projects will have great access to funding resources, even if the investors want to take some time to see family time, stock up on wine and turkey, and slide down the chimney 🎅👍
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