Previously, I planned to write about hackathons as a standard entrepreneurship entry, just like the others. However, I soon realized that every hackathon is unique. What worked for me won’t necessarily work for someone else, and there isn’t a single formula that guarantees success. Instead of documenting exactly how I hosted my hackathons, I decided to write a general guide on how to host successful hackathons. Throughout the guide, I’ll share examples from my own experiences, not as a rule to follow but as a general guide that you can adapt to your own hackathon.
How did I start this?
This hackathon hosting started purely out of curiosity. I was so curious how the large stuff is created, like how big companies are being built. Hosting a hackathon is one way to find out how big stuff is being organized. I started dming people in a community called Hack Club, asking if there is any hackathon organizing team to join. Then, a guy named “Shuwei” offered me to join his hackathon. After that, I joined two more hackathon organizing teams. At first, I started out of curiosity, but in the end, I found out that bringing great people together and creating an environment where they can collaborate are very powerful things that can create innovations in this world.
1. Select great co-organizers
Everything starts with people. You can but it is very hard to host a hackathon with hundreds of participants just by yourselves. You need people to collaborate with each person specializing in their own niches.
How I did it was to join already existing team who is going to host hackathon soon. I’ve sent 20-30 dms in Hack Club Community (I recommend joining this community if you are going to host hackathons).
2. Define the goal
The first thing is to define the theme of the hackathon. What would this hackathon be about? Would it be about neuroscience + tech themes? Or is it more with a specific mission like “coding brain-computer interface that can be used to control an ironman helmet?”. I recommend the first one because it is way easier to attract audience.
3. Logistic (i love this part)!!!
Next, set the date, how long it will be, make logo, set budget (usually $0). Then, find venue and start reaching out to them. Best way is to call. If they don’t respond, next best way is to cold-email. Please do this part early because you might not wanna end up not having a venue on THE DAY and might have to cancel the event.
After this comes finding food, prizes, infra, workspace, and more.
4. Secure sponsorship and partners(my specialty!!!)
What I did in 2 out of 3 hackathons I hosted was to secure sponsorship from big companies. So, why do you need sponsorship?
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- because if you are students, you are probably broke and you need a lot of money to host hackathon (if it is in-person)
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- you might need a company to host workshop in your hackathon. Workshop makes hackathon really fun and meaningful.
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- You need to give prizes to your participants.
So, how do you secure sponsorship and find judges? There is one way I used: cold-emailing. You need to send a lot of cold-emails. I mean a lot!!! One shortcut is to find companies who sponsored another hackathon, because it means that they are companies open to sponsorship.
Before that, you have to draft a prospectus. Prospectus is like a pdf or google docs that introduces your hackathon and your sponsorship packages. This is what we drafted at Scrapyard Sydney Hackathon:
Then, in cold email, attach this file and send it like the image below like I did:
Then, repeat this process for hundreds of times:
Until you get response like this:
After this kind of email comes, you can ask for a meeting, have a meeting, negotiate, and finalize the sponsorship. I’d say response rate is around 10% or less and only half of them actually end of sponsoring you. That means, you have to send tons of cold emails.
For finding judges, you do the exact same process.
5. Recruit participants & marketing
After you secure sponsorship, you have to find participants. The best way to be honest is Hack Club. They have community of bunch of teen builders around the world and in our team, we had members who is super active on Hack Club that he asked and found a bunch of people to participate. This is the best way.
Another good way is posting in DevPost like below.
The website already has a lot of base of participants who are already looking for hackathons to participate in. So, just by uploading your hackathon, you can get a lot of participants.
Another way is to make Instagram post. This is NOT the most effective way in my experience, but can be indirect way that can draw some attention to hackathons. These are some Instagram posts I contributed to:
6. Prepare resources
Publish rules, guidebooks for starters, schedules, and API’s that participants might need. This part is simple and easy so I won’t go into too much details
7. Run the event
Kick off opening speech (keep it very brief) and get straight into building. Mentor some team if needed and make sure that every individual has a team. Feel free to have bunch of ice-breaking sessions like “trying to pitch weird products, like fish shoes, so that customer will buy it”. Make sure that all the workshops are set up and make sure that participants are going there.
8. Run the event
Have all teams present their project and give some times for judges to judge. Give the award and prizes. After the event, make sure to publish winner to the DevPost and the website.
This is it!!!