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Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

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Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#31

Post by carlio »

exelius wrote: post #22
joshstrange wrote: post #12

I've done Startup Weekend once before and it felt like how the "The Business-A-Thon" was described. My friends and I did not know this would be the case going in and spent all of our time pumping out an MVP (which worked!) while the teams that won largely didn't have ANY code to show for their time. It was all slides and marketing talk. The winner DID have code but it was a It was a pretty big letdown and I haven't b…

So team up with a business / marketing person next time. They can build slides and do market research while you write code. I've judged a few hackathons before, and I've seen teams like yours lose because your MVP doesn't actually serve a market need. The market need doesn't even need to be profitable; but you need to define and communicate the problem your product solves. Many talented engineers can't do that. This…

I feel like this is missing the point, as I think the point being made by joshstrange also agrees with.

I don't want to go to hackathons to mimic the real world or simulate business savvy. I want to go there to spend 48hours building something that is technologically fun with likeminded people.

If "appropriate to become a business" is a criterion then it's not a hackathon it's a businessathon.

Put it this way: can I spend 48hrs building a mini hydroponic lab powered by a raspberry pi and arduino? Or should I spend that time making https://www.barkbox.com/ ?

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#32

Post by morgante »

This is why I only attend university hackathons. For the most part, they are still about building cool new tech—not startups. Plus, their increasingly high admissions standards ensure that everyone who attends is either already a developer or eager to learn. Nobody walks away without coding.

One point I disagree with in the article is that cash prizes are harmful. I just don't see evidence of that—prizes at university hackathons have been getting bigger and bigger (tens of thousands of dollars) but it seems like the technical sophistication of hacks continues to rise. So long as you have good judges (ie. hackers, not marketers), large prizes just provide an awesome reward for awesome hacks.

Also, most of the shitty bizathons I've been to actually had relatively small prizes (some API credits, maybe "mentorship") relative to the major hackathons.

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#33

Post by joshstrange »

jasonlotito wrote: post #29
joshstrange wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, SW is meant to be a "Business-A-Thon" and not a hackathon in the traditional sense. This is spelled out in many places, and they make it clear up front that the business plan is key. I understand this now, I decided to do SW at the last minute and hadn't done my research. See my edit above, I see this as my fault for not researching more what I was getting into not SW failure to meet my made up requirem…

Well, in reading these comments, it seems you aren't the only one that confuses SW with hackathon. Maybe it's the people I know locally and how they make sure to differentiate their SW and their hackathon, and how they are distinctly different. Maybe other locations just sort of stress a greater emphasis on hacking than the business side. Regardless, it doesn't seem like you are alone. =)

Especially where I live (Lexington, KY) there are not a plethora of true hackathons to choose from. There are a few smaller language-specific groups that do some event but SW is by far the largest of it's kind in Lexington. So I jumped on SW when I found out about it. It was neat just not really what I was looking for. I get most of my "hackathon"-energy out by just meeting up with friends to work on an idea on a weekend.

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#34

Post by [deleted] »

jasonlotito wrote: post #29
joshstrange wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, SW is meant to be a "Business-A-Thon" and not a hackathon in the traditional sense. This is spelled out in many places, and they make it clear up front that the business plan is key. I understand this now, I decided to do SW at the last minute and hadn't done my research. See my edit above, I see this as my fault for not researching more what I was getting into not SW failure to meet my made up requirem…

Well, in reading these comments, it seems you aren't the only one that confuses SW with hackathon. Maybe it's the people I know locally and how they make sure to differentiate their SW and their hackathon, and how they are distinctly different. Maybe other locations just sort of stress a greater emphasis on hacking than the business side. Regardless, it doesn't seem like you are alone. =)

[deleted]

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#35

Post by sergiotapia »

joshstrange wrote: post #12

I've done Startup Weekend once before and it felt like how the "The Business-A-Thon" was described. My friends and I did not know this would be the case going in and spent all of our time pumping out an MVP (which worked!) while the teams that won largely didn't have ANY code to show for their time. It was all slides and marketing talk. The winner DID have code but it was a It was a pretty big letdown and I haven't b…

That's the very thing you're presenting though. A viable business model. You're there to present a viable idea, not how well your gorgeous code works.

My team won a startup weekend here in Santa Cruz. And we didn't have working code, just a nicely made HTML page that looked like a fully fledged site. But we presented it in such a way that made sense from a business stand point and we won because of it.

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#36

Post by Namrog84 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #11

Looking at going to battlehack (from paypal) this weekend. Wondering how it fits in to the "3 types" from the article - doesn't seem to fit in to any of those 3 specifically.

I've been to many that don't fit into those. But I think it's because the title was 3 harmful types of hackathon. Not "the 3 types of hackathons. The ones you and I have been too were nothing like this and were simply not in the harmful category.

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#37

Post by joshstrange »

sergiotapia wrote: post #35
joshstrange wrote: post #12

I've done Startup Weekend once before and it felt like how the "The Business-A-Thon" was described. My friends and I did not know this would be the case going in and spent all of our time pumping out an MVP (which worked!) while the teams that won largely didn't have ANY code to show for their time. It was all slides and marketing talk. The winner DID have code but it was a It was a pretty big letdown and I haven't b…

That's the very thing you're presenting though. A viable business model. You're there to present a viable idea, not how well your gorgeous code works. My team won a startup weekend here in Santa Cruz. And we didn't have working code, just a nicely made HTML page that looked like a fully fledged site. But we presented it in such a way that made sense from a business stand point and we won because of it.

See my edit:

> Quick edit: Just wanted to say that I see this more as my failing to understand what SW was instead of me blaming SW for not meeting my incorrect expectations. SW is fine but it's just probably not for me.

I now understand this to be the case I just didn't know that going in so for me it was a bit of a disappointment but I have no one to blame but myself and thats the only person I do blame. I do not personally like the way SW does it but that doesn't mean I think they are a bad thing just not for me.

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#38

Post by exelius »

carlio wrote: post #31
exelius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So team up with a business / marketing person next time. They can build slides and do market research while you write code. I've judged a few hackathons before, and I've seen teams like yours lose because your MVP doesn't actually serve a market need. The market need doesn't even need to be profitable; but you need to define and communicate the problem your product solves. Many talented engineers can't do that. This…

I feel like this is missing the point, as I think the point being made by joshstrange also agrees with. I don't want to go to hackathons to mimic the real world or simulate business savvy. I want to go there to spend 48hours building something that is technologically fun with likeminded people. If "appropriate to become a business" is a criterion then it's not a hackathon it's a businessathon. Put it this way: can I…

> can I spend 48hrs building a mini hydroponic lab powered by a raspberry pi and arduino?

I don't see why not. Here's your pitch: recreational marijuana has been legalized in 5 states, but commercial sale is only legal in two, while cultivation for personal use is legal in all five. Additionally, if black market sales are included, marijuana is the biggest cash crop in the US with $35 billion annually. So there is BIG money in the market. A rpi/arduino hydroponic system is the first prototype of a product you can sell to consumers so they can grow their own in areas where they can't buy it. It's like Nest, but for growing pot.

Now have some business nerd spend an hour making a few slides and you're done. You have articulated the problem, the size of the market and the product you're creating. You don't actually have to make the product beyond the prototype stage, you just have to pitch it like you could.

Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons

#39

Post by MichaelCrawford »

How is equity divided among the members of a team? There are many ways it could be but unless it is discussed - and agreed to - up-front, if a successful business results, or perhaps if lots of debts result, so will lawsuits.

By contrast I greatly enjoyed MacHack. It saddens me that it's not held anymore. Most people work on their own things, as individuals. The prize is an "A-Trap". It's a type of rat trap; the A-Trap was chosen because Mac OS System and Toolbox calls were implement as "A-Line Exceptions", that is, an illegal instruction, the first byte of which was 0xA.

The objective of MacHack was to hack the system in some clever way; it wasn't to start a business. It was to have fun.

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