So I decided to go to the Disrupt Hackathon this past May to get some free snacks and maybe even a Beer! After a few hours of bumming around and talking to people; trying to convince them to do a little mapping hack. I ran into Justin @justinisaf who had a nice little idea at hand. He wanted to create a little hack for A-B testing of product performance, which I though had legs but sounded kinda boring. I told him I would think about it and get back to him.
I spent another hour talking to other hackers about their projects, sharing my ideas, giving each other feedback and suggestions. From previous wins at these things, I found that the best way to reach that amazing idea is by putting your idea on the table. Shoot it out there, tell everyone about it and take good notes on the feedback. As I was telling everyone about my ideas for hacks, I realized that there was one a crucial element that was not very strong on all my concepts. It was not strong, not because the idea was bad, but because I had not spent enough time thinking about a way to monetize the idea. This is often the downfall of great concepts at hackathons.
Thinking back to Justin’s hack, I saw the great potential for the product and you could see that there was something there waiting to jump at you. I went back to talk to him and after another 10 min of dialogue, the synergy could be felt and I decided to join the project. The team consisted of Justin, Tyler @tylerstalder and Jon @jonmarkgo
We all chiped in to develop different aspects of the hack with one goal in mind (after some discussion on what the hack was actually going to be). The Hack would be called Thingscription and it would be a platform that would allow anyone to subscribe to any product for home deliery. Once you bought a subscription to a product (like shaving cream), you would get your product in the mail every week, month or whatever amount of time you chose for the subscription.
What was great about this hack, its that it started with a nifty way to do business and it expanded into a general money making machine that would benefit the average Joe.
After a pound of snacks, a gallon of Beer, a barrel of coffee and the occasional redbull it was 3am and decided that Justin would present Thingscription, so it would make sense that he go home, get some sleep and look pretty for the camera =) For the rest of us, it was break time, perhaps a massage courtesy of Mobli and then a well needed nap!
From 4:30am till 9am it was crunch time, designing, coding, frameworks, elevator pitch! The MVP is always the main focus and features are fun to talk about but placed way, way in the back burner.
Before we knew it, they moved us out of the main hack space so they could setup for the Main Disrupt event. And then while putting the final touched on the hack it was almost time to present! We were #31 out of 92 teams. #27 was presenting when our team was called to set up! Jon was literary still coding as he was walking up to setup the laptop for demo.
The presentation went well and we were confident that we gave our 100% on this project. You can see the presentation here: http://techcrunch.com/events/disrupt-ny-hackathon-2012/sound-bites/?snapid=30796
After the presentation, we grabbed some coffee and actually started paying attention to the other teams; which I must say, had impressive hacks. My favorite project was this hack called Poachbase, a website to go find talent from startups that did not make it. Such a great idea, and so funny! All the teams finished presenting and the judges went to the back to discuss and pick winners.
When they called everyone back in, the sponsored prizes were announced; non won by Thingscription as expected. Most of the prizes are won by hacks using sponsored APIs, and we did not use any of those. We kept it real and went out on a limb to make a project we thought was cool and had potential to make some $$.
The finalists were finally up, third place went to Practikhan “A platform that lets teachers create their own online quizzes to share with their students.”
Second Place went to Poachbase, which I thought was well deserved! And the winners, which I felt for a slight millisecond might be us, but then realize that there were 40 other projects that were just as amazing. Is… Bla bla bla bla bla!?? When the winner was announce, I completely spaced out and did not hear the name of the hack. I looked over at my team, and they were all looking back at me super shocked! And then finally Justin clarified the whole thing by exclaiming; We WON!!!
It was a very cool moment, yet we all felt we deserved the darn first place. A well thought out idea, with skilled hacking and an awesome team!
Here are some highlights:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/20/introducing-our-2012-disrupt-nyc-hackathon-winners-thingscription-poachbase-and-practikhan/