First Hackathon đ ď¸
I believe in celebrating small wins, and this is definitely one of them. On Saturday (07/12/2019) I had one of the best experiences ever at HiveColab where I attended my very first official hackathon.
It was quite the experience and Iâd like to share a couple of things I learned from my experience in this article.
It was quite the experience and Iâd like to share a couple of things I learned from my experience in this article.
Introduction & Teams
I had a friend at the hackathon already and I also came along with two other friends so it was a easier for us to form a team but well the whole point is not to team up with the people you know but rather a couple of different people such that you can get to learn and work together .
Topics, Problems and Solutions
Since this was an IOT hackathon, I was scared at first because I have never worked with it but only have an understanding of the topic but lucky enough we were not necessarily required to build anything from there but rather build up our ideas
We were presented with a number of topics to choose from which included Agriculture, smart cities, energy management, smart retail and a couple of other topics
My team chose to go with energy management in a way to solve the current challenges facing power distribution in the country .
We tried to solve a couple of problems and we didnât really focus on one major problem and find the ideal solution for that, one may say we didnât really understand the problem. Well thatâs a lesson well learned .
Pitching , Results and Networking
The judges, Andrew and Bonita were exceptional with the questions , identifying our mistakes and also with the advice on what to do next .
All the teams had to pitch their ideas and you could feel the tension in the room when a team was called to the floor or when the judges were asking the questions đ
The results, well we all know how pretty emotional and daunting this moment can be . The drum rolls and applauses had everyone anxiously waiting for the best three teams to be announced. Well no , my team wasnât among but well the experience was everything I had not imagined at a hackathon.
Networking , this is one of the reasons I attend such events and yes I met new people and we got to interact with each other . Itâs really great learning from one another.
Advice
As I said before the judges were exceptional with their advice to all the teams . I managed to take some notes
- During pitching your body language is key , donât turn your back to the audience or sideways always speak to the crowd and with confidence. Make sure you introduce your team members, let the judges know their roles on the team e.g designer, marketer and have them participate in the presentation too. Some partners actually invest in people and would like to see a group with different professions rather than a whole group of developers .
- Fully understand the problem youâre trying to solve and present it with facts, evidence and statistics . Donât use assumptions in order to bring out the solutions because the judges will not understand it.
- Fully understand the market youâre developing for . Once you figure this out, you can rest assured youâre going to succeed with your business model.
- For every pitch youâre supposed to answer 5 questions. What ? Why ? Where ? When ? How ? Usually you have 5 minutes to convince the judges to move on with your idea. Use one minute to state your problem in one statement ( also called the problem statement). Use the next two minutes to state the solutions to the problem and use the next one minute no to explain your business model ( how you expect to earn money )
- Donât try to have all the solutions at once , start small and have an entry point. WhatsApp didnât start with all the fancy features we have today. Understand what your MVP ( minimum viable product) is going to do.
- Build to sell or have an exit strategy. Figure out how to monetize your product once itâs fully established.
- Build to plugin your solutions into an already existing or established solution . This will guarantee market and easy merging with other companies.
- Build sustainable products and solutions that will last a while .
Finally to the winning teams , it doesnât stop at winning but take the idea to the next phase, look for grants and partners .
Congratulationsđ to the best three teams and to all the teams for participating. Thank you HiveColab for the opportunity đ¤
Originally published at https://www.stuartelimu.me on December 08, 2019.