🎤 Beyond HackFS Past Winner Panel

[Applause] [Music] which is going to be a panel which is going to be led by lucas from the protocol labs team so let me just get all set up here as they all come on stage um this is a panel i'm like really excited about because it's sort of uh an awesome opportunity to chat about the the work that both protocol labs is doing as well as all the awesome projects from our events as well so this is a panel on kind of past hackathon winners and and they're kind of post hackathon journey so i know a lot of people here are starting their first hackathon journey um or some people are starting their aunt's hackathon journey but uh really there's a tremendous amount of opportunity to use these two and a half weeks to learn build something iterate use all the resources uh that both from the summits and uh from the people that are going to be around you and as david just says more fun with more people around you um and it's been amazing to see the amount of impact that that hackathons have had on these different projects coming to life so um we are joined by uh lucas who um is kind of the the point point point of command at protocol labs around just kind of orchestrating all these hackathon outcomes we're excited to have him leading this alec as kartik mentioned earlier um is the ceo of vallis davaos is a project that came out of hack fest um and then we're also joined by karen um who's working at hybrid who also started hyperdap so um really exciting to have all three of you here um and i'm gonna get out of the way so that uh lucas can take over so i'll encourage you all to take on uh turn on your cameras and uh we'll get this show rolling thanks so much jacob awesome cool i'll i'll kick it off and thanks so much and karen and alex for joining this channel and i'm super excited and i would uh i was just like hoping that we could use this panel to get people and really excited about this hackathon and then not just like what's going to happen during this hackathon but also like all the potential that kind of comes after and so that's what what i'm hoping that we can you know spend the next um 30 minutes or so i'm talking about and for all the people watching and i'd also encourage them to kind of put their questions right like what are some of the things that you might be wondering about and as you as you dive into this um hackathon and yeah super super nice to meet you and alec and karen i'd love to kick it off by just um kind of going around the room maybe with a brief introduction and karen i'll start with you maybe and tell everyone who you are and what what you do at hyperdap and what hyperdap does and and then i would love for you to also talk about um your relationship to hackathons and both each global one heck fs maybe specifically but also beyond um and then right like how many did you participate in and did you win any um so yeah let's start there over to your turn yeah great thank you thank you lucas um so hi everyone my name is karen so i'm currently co-founder at hyperdap so hyperdab is a platform that that's to enable anyone to instantly create and deploy frontends of decentralized applications so what we are building is a platform and a tool that takes away all the complexities um related to integrating web3 interactions uh in the front end of the apps that will make it really easy so our tool is accessible to not only devs but anyone who has some basic knowledge about smart contracts and in terms of my experience with with hackathons so i was part of the hyperdub so we actually uh submitted our project to east denver um a virtual hackathon at the end of march so i was part of the team and prior to that i actually um started my my journey in web 3 um through with the um chain link spring hackathon uh last year cool awesome so we have like two two hackathons in in the um and one more interesting thing is uh alex here and i are both uh alums of the tech young accelerator i think that's something that's notable that's uh noteworthy great awesome yeah i would love to talk about kind of your experience um that that kind of what happened after after those psychophones and um and we'll dive into those into those moments alec um over to you maybe also start with a brief intro about who you are and and what you do with um valleys and and what problem you're solving with ballast and what your personal history has been with hackathons sure yeah super awesome to be here yeah thanks for having me uh i'm alec co-founder and ceo of ballast um and val says web through native software distribution so a web through way to publish your apps games binaries uh and even source code snapshots now so um yeah that's what we do and then as far as experience with hackathons actually yeah my co-founder and i used to participate in a lot of web 2 hackathons um throughout college but really there is seriously nothing like web 3 hackathons it's really awesome and uh and eth global puts them on the best for sure but uh yeah um we started at hack fest uh 2020 and basically uh i actually remember very vividly uh when zach and i were signing up and we were like super excited like oh yeah this is this is gonna be awesome uh and uh yeah we signed up and then we we did the hack vals was super basic at that point um but then uh yeah we also uh once we did the uh finale presentation uh tachyon also reached out to us as well and then that kind of started a whole other journey that yeah it's kind of its own uh deep dive that we can go to so yeah cool awesome thanks so much for sharing that um i i love that we have kind of i think the first hack fs in 2020 was probably was it also virtual or was it was it in it was virtual okay so i guess we're we're mostly if if we're talking about hackathons in the past few years talking about the virtual experience and and hackerfest is now virtual again too and i think east denver earlier this year karen was was live i think i was there but you said you participated virtually so we'll get like a good scoop that's that's perfect because we are at a virtual hackathon and so i think a lot of the learnings will will apply or a lot of the lessons that you guys kind of took away and i'd love to kind of just go through that journey from basically start to finish and and we can kind of double click into it and and maybe the first thing is like why did you guys decide to participate in hackathon right like you probably were doing other things and you're like hey like i'm gonna spend the next week or weekend or weeks and doing this thing like what was it that motivated you to and you know dedicate your time here did somebody pull you in or how did you learn about it so yeah just curious there care and maybe you go first yeah sure i think my my experience may be really interesting and i want to uh probably use it to inspire non-developers who are curious and are interested in getting into web 3. um so let's just go back to uh around like springtime 2021. so at that time i was i was about to leave my my job my position as a head of data science at the web 2 startup and i was looking for new ideas and that's when i got to learn about the concepts about nft and and web 3. but i was totally a a a newbie and or like at that point so but then i have an idea about building a sort of a marketplace that empower photographers but like so i was talking to like i got started with talking to some users and talking to some developer friends and then i got in touch with someone a friend of mine who works at chain link and then he told me that hey you should uh join our discord and we have this hackathon going on this is a great place to connect with developers and that's how things started so i think it's been really incredible experience so far for me for someone who's not who comes from an undead background because at that point um i have no idea about what oracle was what was like a really basic uh knowledge about smart contracts so it's been a really uh great experience in growing my knowledge base and also got myself immersed into into web 3 as a founder and a business operator from the very beginning awesome let's double click into that a little bit i'd be super curious like what are some of the um things that you maybe would recommend to somebody with a similar background who's very new to this and um new to web3 and and maybe even not an engineer and welcome to all those who are not engineers right like you're you're still in the right place but i'm curious if there's um i know one or two things that you'd be like hey this is a this is a good place like i know there's a lot there's a ginormous discord happening lots of conversations lots of um workshops like what's a good place to start like what would you say um you know for somebody who's very new and try to help them orient um i would say uh the first start is probably just the the intros or the uh finding a teammate a channel on on any hackathon discord so this is a great way to go through i think this is a really a great channel to um just go through ideas i did that other people have and see if there are any synergies and also synergies in terms of idea or signatures uh in terms of uh complementary skill sets and then really be be open to communicating with people um have dms with people from different backgrounds whether it's a back-end developer a designer or a pm or anyone yeah cool i think that's great advice i mean there are right like at the end of the day like if if you're kind of um here on your own or you know maybe with one other person and just just do know that there are a lot of people like you right so you're kind of together alone for now but um like yeah i would definitely encourage you to um kind of connect with folks and left and right and in maybe even the chat right now or something alec and maybe over to you for a second um how did you kind of get involved with hackathons why did you think that was a good use of your time or what what kind of inspired you to join it yeah certainly so as i mentioned before my co-founder and i we're doing a few different hackathons uh and really our motivations were always just trying to build something like just that creative like hey let's see how much we could build in a shorter period of time with the tools at hand and we were always just really into like building mvps and stuff um and uh you know we complement each other's skill sets really well and so we've kind of always go gone as a team um and then met so many new friends with hack fs i very specifically remember though um the motivation for applying for hack fest was actually like hey cause uh we had been engineers in the space for a while around 2016 um doing like core dev stuff wallet dev stuff uh other things like that and and then we you know had moved towards like helping write coding bootcamps uh and then we actually got to write the last third of this fintech course and we got to write it all in web3 so basically people would come in and learn fintech and then at the end we would like basically try and convince them hey what three actually uh but there was this like disconnect uh that uh you know just like hey like i feel like i'm in the community but like i don't know a whole lot of other web 3 devs um besides our existing like circles basically and um yeah i very specifically remember when applying for hackerfest i was like yeah we can we could actually like build something that gets in front of all the right people and we can make all the right friends and like find like and find uh and and there was actually also like uh another motivation too of like hey maybe we could we didn't think it would actually play out the way it did but you know we're always um you know putting things out there into the universe kind of thing and just like uh you know when things come along you know so it's like hey we realized hey we could actually build this out into something bigger um that's that's kind of the direction we took but but yeah i think yeah i definitely remember having that conversation with zach and be like yeah like this is going to be sick like it's global like it's going to be online like everyone's going to be like it was just like protocol labs is sponsoring it with them like oh yeah like it was just so exciting and just yeah like that was definitely a big part of it yeah cool awesome thanks so much um i i love it and you you guys are almost like kind of coming from it and from a different angle right like where can kind of join was like hey i'm exploring new opportunities this might be a good way to kind of get get and get some more exploration and you were like you came in with an idea and we're like looking almost for a forum to showcase some of those ideas and get in front of the right people and maybe alec for you the question a little bit like how did you go about like finding the right idea right like finding a problem that like was worth tackling over a weekend or over the course of a few weeks like how do you go about like you know through your day-to-day work and then like finding a problem like okay that's a great hackathon problem for yourself like how do you go about and what would your recommendation be there for for folks who are like yeah like that sounds like great but like what is the thing that i should be working on yeah no that's a very good and also a very tough question at the same time uh probably what makes it so good i think it's uh a lot of it honestly was a culmination of a long period of time of being around the problems in the space and realizing like hey we're still using web 2 for everything on the distribution level and just like hey can we can we just see what this looks like if we find a way to move binaries with ipfs and some version control smart contract just something super simple proof of concept like can we at least like move towards that direction i was super into the idea of like uh you know well still obviously but uh uh ethereum keys as like your identity obviously and then as a replacement for ssh and pgp keys in the form of auth and i was really coming from like a security background um and so i would just say like it just naturally was interesting because it cropped up multiple times and just like was this ironic thing um as far as recommendations the only thing i could recommend is just introspect think about what you really care about and what you're really interested in and you will probably there are probably things that you've come across multiple times or maybe you came across once and you're like hey you know i might want to go explore that again because really i mean zach and i have been doing a bunch of different projects so it was kind of just iterating and not being attached to a single idea and just continuing to try things over and over and over again until we eventually stumbled upon something that uh has value in a broader sense um and so that's the best that i could recommend is just keep trying things that you like and you have fun with we always go into it having fun otherwise it's like what's the point right like so um yeah i mean definitely go into it having fun just whatever you vibe with whatever is interesting to you um and then obviously like you have to figure out the scope of how much time you have versus like the idea and how big it is um but you kind of get better at that over time too so i would just say like keep going hackathons and just keep keep doing this you'll get better at um that like feedback loop as well of just like hey like we built this get better at it uh every time kind of thing oh well sorry sir yes you're siri activated but yeah that's that's what i would say cool awesome thanks so much for sharing that and i'd be super interested maybe if we can spend a little later in the in our conversation on some of the biggest opportunities that you guys see maybe from your vantage point right now with with the problems that you're facing but maybe also web 3 and who knows the world in general right like what are some some like problems and worth addressing from your perspective we'll look at that a little bit later too and i'd love to now kind of go beyond the hackathon right so now you're there you've built your idea you've met a couple of interesting people you've had a chance to showcase and what you've done and what what what kind of what happened next and i'd i'd be almost like i'd love to break it down into two component components which is like one like what what did you personally gain from it right in i don't know friendships or whatever it is new connections and and then also professionally and maybe those two things kind of blend a little bit and but yeah like um maybe karen over to you with that question first like what were some of the you know personal um growth that you see and then maybe also what will maybe talk about the professional stuff in a second but maybe let's start there yeah sure so i think the inter on the on the social level in terms of what you can gain from hackathon i think it goes far beyond just the people you work you collaborate with for this particular project it can really go and go beyond that for instance um any those people that help you from different protocols different uh platforms those people could great become really great partners and friends for instance we we started out our first project at the chain links we're in spring hackathon so even after the hackathon when we continued to work on a product for our beta launch um i would say it really took a whole village to to raise and launch a project we got so much uh support from product managers uh market the marketing team the product team and the engineering team from from chain link it's it was tremendous yeah and the support of the friendship like last forever yeah yeah even even with our first project our first uh uh client uh user the creator that we work with for launch our projects uh came from um came through an intro um they're from the chaining team well awesome that's great like having those anecdotes i i wonder um if you have like a moment or an anecdote um that you remember we like wow that's maybe something that i didn't expect was gonna fall out of this apart from you know like you were like ready to showcase your project but like some and yeah i don't know if there's anything that surprises you like wow like i didn't know a hackathon would unlock this for me personally um you know or you know in terms of friends or or something like that and does anything come to mind there yeah honestly like i i i say this with no exaggeration like i'm not saying this to be like super heartfelt or anything it this is straight up like it actually changed the entire course of where my life was going uh you know and so and like just i felt like i got plugged in into the community that i was like missing in a way and just being around people with like-minded ideas and and not having to just like constantly prove like with web 3 and crypto especially a few years ago it was just like you know constantly battling this uh anti-narrative and just like you know kind of it's like exhausting a little bit eventually when you're constantly trying to pitch the validity of what you're doing for a living almost and it's like interesting yeah whereas like if you get plugged into people who are actually um you know believe the same things and you know have the same values and just yeah i don't it's just that and then um you know when shout out to gabriel anderson from tachyon when he emailed uh emailed me i was like wow this is okay and i was like from con consensus okay like what's up this is uh very surprising like um i was surprised that we won because it was such a global thing and then i'm surprised that uh you know so many people were watching that and we had that idea but we just you just never know and i would say that that's the biggest thing like i've learned since like you never know who's gonna do what who's who knows who what like it's just you never know so just you know keep you know putting positivity out there and just keep moving forward and like that's the biggest thing that like yeah it definitely what there's so many things like i could keep going on about personal uh i've met so many amazing friends in the space professional like that's completely uh entirely new levels of uh opportunity that have opened up and uh you know we just didn't i mean even with the you know vc afterwards like that wasn't even something that we considered uh as a possibility i never grew up around you know that kind of mentality you know and like people doing like friends and family rounds and stuff like i never like that was never a thing i was exposed to and so yeah that was just like another unexpected thing um post hackathon yeah cool awesome thanks so much i mean um i i i fully hear both of you on like i think a lot of these personal connections and are what makes this even for me like super rewarding and engaging with folks and and finding community and and being challenged right to like bring your best and also just like having fun together and i think that's super awesome and i sometimes see like when you show up to an event or you see it advertised somewhere or people are trying that's almost something that's not that's even talked about but it's like one of the one when they actually show up it's like it turns out to be like the thing that that actually makes this super um rewarding and you know like the website always has like you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes to be won and that's amazing but like um that alone is like after talking to a lot of um kind of builders in the space like that's not actually what gets them here like that's great and that like gives you some um you know runway to or or reward and that's obviously amazing and a key part of it but um the reason why people stick around is because of the relationships that they built um cool i i like i'd love to kind of um go into the the tachyon story and they gave you a story a little bit more and so maybe like tell us a little bit what happened so you pitched your project and and then you got a call after the hackathon or got an email like what happened and like what doors did that open for you yeah so something i learned is that yeah a lot of uh investors are watching these projects and yeah a lot of them if you're at new york you know a lot of them were approaching uh projects afterwards and just yeah it's definitely uh so yeah we we did the finale uh live demo which was awesome uh to do that uh as well and um yeah so that was um yeah he emailed us shortly after the finale um i was like hey you want to chat about it and then maybe to tell everyone who who is gabriel sorry yeah yeah i i know him you know yeah yeah i guess yeah you're getting a lot of love here but yeah sorry about that so gabriel anderson is the managing director of tachyon so tachyon uh and and filecoin launchpad accelerator are protocol labs and consensus uh partnering together to to do an accelerator where it's a three-month uh essentially a boot camp for startups um which is great coming off of writing boot camps for web 3. so that was a really awesome transition as well but uh yeah so it's essentially bootcamps for startups gabriel um is a really great uh you know leader and just uh you know multi-uh time entrepreneur and just very great at candid feedback and just helping you um really realize the sort of the potential of what you're building as well as you know flesh out some of the actual you know the value propositions and how to actually get it ready for venture capital which is an entirely other ball game essentially honestly yeah it's like and you know um there's grants there's there's bootstrapping stuff and that's something my co-founder always did with other businesses so that was definitely new so um yeah he taught us a lot about that and the rest of tacky on team of course but yeah cool awesome and karen you were in that program too can you maybe like share some light on like what happened in those three months you you came in with with the hackathon project or a version of a hackathon project or did you already have you already developed it more yeah i'm just curious um i um i'm a second i'm a two-time alum alumni of of taikan accelerator so i entered attacking a cohort uh last year last summer with my first with the first project that spun off from chilling whispering hackathon and then with half dab of this year we we joined the the latest cohort yeah um so obviously to add what um what alex just said it's very different game from from very different uh trajectory and a game plan to build a hackathon project as opposed to building a uh venture back-able business what are what are some of the major differences i guess yeah so what are the things that you focus on during the hackathon what kind of questions are you trying to solve and i would say a great a great start uh a great start if even for when you work on a hackathon project if you want to turn this into a viable business in the future i think it's really great to really helpful to hold down on the the pro the problem solution part at first there's one thing we learned from my past security appearance that that for some hackathon projects um we might be motivated to to build some really innovative solutions with some existing uh technology first without thinking through to too much about what exactly the problem is and what the exactly the addressable market is cool and awesome any alec from you any any other things to add there in terms of like this is what we took to a hackathon and then like these are the things that we kind of tagged on and to it and during the course of those three months what what were some of your main focus areas there definitely yeah so i guess yeah just to touch on that a little bit um from from a hackathon project and for venture capital investors are definitely looking at uh like karen said the market opportunity there um some projects solve a very niche problem some projects solve a really awesome like some of the really awesome uh solutions but then if you zoom out and you look at the scope of the problems uh certain things might be a 10 million dollar market 100 million market they're looking for billion dollar plus markets that you could expand into essentially so that's like a lot of the lens when you're looking at the business model and you're looking at how to scale that application up um and then yeah venture capital really likes you know products that you build and you can scale rapidly to many users and then you can expand into other markets from there not all projects can do that and not all um you know products are really meant for that level of scale um and you know some businesses you know like are perfectly sustainable um at a 10 million dollar revenue um but it's going to take a whole different um architecture almost to to scale it out past that uh service businesses for example venture capital doesn't like to invest in that um that was a lot of things so yeah when framing the the product and then um hackathons actually help a lot with the the whole mvp and getting things out there quickly and iterating on your on your project and getting user feedback quickly um but then yeah now you have to start focusing on that business model how it actually scales hiring you know things like that actually getting investors interested um yeah and then uh you know once you get the capital obviously making it happen and and scale from there um so yeah there's a lot of a lot of things there's a lot more to it than the code itself yeah i i bet i bet i am luke welcome i like no no problem for being late i know eu air travel is crazy right now i'm i'm also scared i'm flying from the us to europe later tonight and like oh let's see if it works um but welcome and just um talking um with karen and alec about kind of the things that you you submit a hackathon project and like what do you start worrying about after right like to turn a hackathon project into something that becomes investable from an mvc perspective and alec and karen were sharing kind of their perspective i i'd love to dive in one one click deeper and and and then look i'll let you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about you know what you're working on and what your relationship is with hackathons and how you took it kind of postdoctorate and again karen like one thing on this like you know adding a lot of things like you both strike me as that confident people and like know what you want and but it also like sounds to me like a very daunting thing to do right like you're now in in different kinds of rooms that you didn't maybe even sign up for kind of you you know you kind of got pulled into it you got an email like um what were some of the um problems or like really like challenges like hey like i'm not prepared for this or like some of the you know those kind of like difficulties that you ran into already like i'm flexing really outside of my comfort zone like what were some of the things that you had to invest most of your energy into kind of get comfortable around maybe karen first um i i would say the first revelation is that um after after you build a project uh during a hackathon and one turn into into a business you need to figure out how to acquire your customers right it depends on also depending on your business model uh for instance for our first project it's a b2 it's an fta platform so it's a b2 uh b2b2c um model so you have to figure out how to acquire creators artists in the first place and then when that's completed you had to figure out hey where do you find the collectors that the the end uh customers that are going to uh purchase and acquire those those uh artists not to work um so this is a one one challenge and then another uh a challenge it's for sure for sure it's i think it's i like i have to must remember this from the tachyon curriculum um team risk is the top one risk for any business startup so like building a project with with some people with with some teammates within like a month a span of three weeks or a month is relatively easy compared to building a sustainable business with some people over one year or five years down down the road so you have to figure out this dynamics of the team and um really become um friends and allies with your co-founders awesome thanks for sharing that so getting cast getting real customers getting real-world feedback is a tough one and then um you know figuring out how you go from a you know weekend team that's having some fun to you know some a mix of professional and then personal relationships that that it can actually be sustained over some time i like any any other things to add there that that were like big daunting things to you and that you had to invest some energy behind yeah lots of things honestly yeah and you know always learning every day obviously so i think um the uh one of the biggest things are uh yeah i mean gosh there were so many things from just you know coming as an engineer into growing as like a product person uh you know just as a leader and things like that in general they're definitely or just you know with talking investors understanding what investors want um and you know what your customers want how to align them all up and then yeah just those are there's a lot of different spinning plates and i would say the biggest uh one of the best uh pieces of advice we got was from juan um binet actually in the uh in the um he just said one of the best things you could do is just figure out how to learn as quickly as you can and to increase your rate of learning that i think covers like so many things it's like such a meta way of thinking about it that i think it covers all the things where it's like yeah as long as you're increasing your rate of learning at any given thing because you're gonna have to do it all anyway you're gonna have to figure it out on all different accounts like you're just gonna have to do it so you're just gonna have to figure out how quickly you can do it find the resources and figure out how to iterate on that as quickly as possible so that was the biggest takeaway but yeah i mean it was the most daunting thing to me was the first time i saw uh the numbers in the bank account that were higher than any numbers that i've ever seen and then the realization of oh wait yeah we're responsible for that um obviously we knew that and you always tell yourself and you know going in but you never really know until you know you're strapped in and that's it um so you know that definitely took a while to get used to that external pressure but you get used to that too so and and then now you embrace it and now it's a very strong drive forward so it's like yeah you just just keep embracing keep learning and adapting yeah because it is going to be challenging on all fronts for sure awesome cool thanks for sharing that so just like a whole new burden of responsibility both kind of like managing a budget making choices between how you prioritize your time how you prioritize other people's time and super cool insights thanks so much i love this it's super super um interesting to hear all this luke um i'd like to kick it over to you and maybe just briefly introduce yourself and what you kind of do what you work on and then talk a little bit about your history and with hackathons and and how that was kind of an entry point or wasn't an entry point for what you're doing today uh so my name is zuck i'm currently working on field mine fieldmine is a sharp working on infrastructure for storage providers so we focus on tooling that helps storage providers be good miners this includes doing storage but it also includes doing computing over search and we're hoping to build infrastructure that will allow computing converter data which is pretty challenging right now but there are many pieces that are included and we have a chance of actually making this possible in the next couple of years uh i got into hackathons back in 2018 uh actually this was the way i got in actually coding inventory and like previously to that i was doing a bunch of miami back in 2013 but i don't think that was kind of free it was more like uh you have a computer not doing anything let's try to like figure out where that computer could be doing something and then that turned out to be like 10 computers not one uh but yeah like at the end of the day it was not like really web free happening back then it was just doing some script mining uh that is kind of pointless uh hopefully today we'll be able to do computing jobs in a similar way uh back then as i was trying to do like something useful with my computer maybe uh in the next couple of months i'm gonna be able to do something useful with the computer network that we're building and hopefully we can allow people to kind of crowdsource computing resources and allow uh like very large computational jobs to be executed on that network um also a few points on hackathons it was kinda uh unique in my case because it was back in 2018 in the interim ecosystem so that was a very great experience for me because i learned how communities form how uh how you actually go out and show up and show people what you're building on uh and actually uh we kind of use those opportunities to like also show new features of the products and we were kind of trying to leverage the hackathons to actually build the new features so we go there with some ideas we know what we want to solve and we use the hackathon to actually push out the feature that gives us like instant feedback because we have like a bunch of people that we need to present that to and we also get instant users especially back then because it was very chaos in terms of like infrastructure and like dev tools were not really that uh that used so we were focused on actually like trying to build those tools and have uh also developers try to use them right on the hackathon and and then try to to pitch that to judges and then uh i i think we are in a similar uh moment in the falcon and ipfs ecosystems because like storage is much slower uh in terms of innovation uh compared to uh like term mainly because it is much higher and we are now at the point where things are becoming possible and i i think like we are in a similar situation uh asked i was back in 2018 first of all because we are in a bear market so like most people uh will be actually listening to you when you are building something it's not just gonna be hype it's gonna be people trying to actually understand what you're building and trying to use that and a lot more people will be ganking that want to build rather than people that want to sell which is also very important for our ecosystem to evolve and for anyone starting now i think it's a perfect moment to actually uh build things see how the community is going to evolve the falcon and ipfs communities are still very very small even though like a lot of work was done uh the ethereum ecosystem is not that small anymore like if you want to get in that ecosystem like probably no one is going to notice that if you get in the ipfs and falcon ecosystem you can build a lot of uh a lot of traction very fast if you build the right things and you can get a lot of exposure uh and lucas is probably the best person to help you out with that if you succeed with this packaging and if you get some prizes or uh if you uh win on the hackathon or you even pitch to lucas and lucas thinks that it's a good idea uh a few things can happen from there i love good ideas and it's it's lucas plus a whole community of people right that are um you know that i work with and that are invested in you know helping builders succeed right like that is literally my job description so um yeah like i i try to make the the connection try to make those connections possible and like facilitate those meetings and i i i have one one quick question and book on on this like one specific element that you described which is i first of all i love this idea of like taking a strategic look and like almost like a step back medic what's the best place to jump in right and then like finding the ecosystem that actually has the highest almost like return on investment where you're like this actually has that i get the most impact for my time or something it's not you know you're not spending money you're spending your time which is is even more valuable i think and you said one thing that i'd love to double click on which is um that you used hackathons almost as a tool to get feedback and from people that you're reading describe how that works so you're building a feature at a hackathon and then what happens like on on the last day or i don't know you just walk around and chat people up and like hey what do you think or why is that after the hackathon and just curious like to how you how you get the feedback or you just pester everyone and annoy them until they tell you what they think yeah hopefully you do it before so you don't build something stupid uh i mean it was much easier back in 2018 because like it was a physical event now you would need to like be on discord and bring people there and discover that is a bit busy so um might be hard to get feedback before uh but actually it's very useful to like get even before you actually start thinking about the hacking like try to think about the things that you would wanna uh do in your life like uh what are you missing like in terms of like social networking like social networking is kind of bad right now like most of the data is owned by a few companies and uh you are not kind of using the same data like with different apps which is stupid like why don't you try to fix that and there are many tools right now available to you like uh tableland like um a bunch of dr tools that the textile team built like that you can actually use to like show some apps that are interoperable and that can actually share data between them and maybe uh you build like the same app but then you have like two algorithms uh that the apps are using for actually like showing uh like feeds of people's photos and so on so but then what you do is you have that idea and you go to people and you ask them whether uh they would want to do something like that and then you try to also to be to like ask very open questions like what are the things that are not really working for them in terms of social networking and so on and you try to get to something that really makes sense and then you try to build it now uh in our case it was devtools mainly because we were kind of in the early phases on the trim ecosystem so like it's not like many use cases were being built back in 2018 on ethereum so we were trying to build tools that would help with developers build better tools by the way those are like the tools that are also required in the term i could in the falcon ecosystem right now like because there are many tools that need to be built uh that would allow developers maybe at some point to actually have interoperability uh maybe have some of the other uh characteristics of web3 that we are seeing right now in d5 but we are not seeing video so maybe like function uh so like a like function addressable computation for example like uh try using fluence try combining multiple uh workloads that would otherwise be very difficult to glue on a cloud provider uh because you for example with lambda functions you it's very hard for you to actually like have communication through the content but on ipfs through uh content addressing and uh functional addressing with the fluence logic it's not that hard but very few people have actually tried that so those are all like avenues that you could adventure and potentially learn a bunch of things up uh also zooming out and maybe also thinking about where do you position yourself for future growth um if you think about what happened in the interim ecosystem we got innovation only in a relatively small uh part of our lives which is finance but if you zoom in on file and ipfs probably like most of the things uh that you're interacting with with your phone or computer will need to be changed and those are many more than what we have changed on the on the finance side so thinking about all of those things that you can actually improve uh with falcon ipfs so would definitely help you uh think about the ideas that you wanna build cool thanks so much for that perspective um i i think there's a ton here right like if making the right choices when evaluating what to build on how to even find the right ecosystem i also love in the point kind of around front loading as much of the feedback as possible and and i bet they would even have you know to parents point from earlier when you're actually then going into this world where you know trying to engage real customers you already have a version of that and that makes it a lot more compelling to you know follow-on opportunities ella karen and looking a little bit at time i'd love to um close out with and kind of what luke already started which is like what are some of the opportunities that you see like what what do you think cause the hosts the most potential and i'll try to force you to limit it to really like the top one or top two um avenues that you believe and people should pursue be it like you know the type of event right participate in hackathon the ecosystem right ethereum versus something else or the 500 ecosystem or you know a specific use case or what category is it the dev tool or is it you know maybe end user facing tool like where do you see the greatest opportunities i'll kick it off with alec maybe and then karen i'll let you close it out yeah that's really excellent question there's lots of things there it'd be kind of hard to pare it down but the best way i could probably do that is i i personally uh obviously crypto you know is finance um but you know i've always been really curious about the non-financial use cases kind of with values like just hey and i think hackafest is one of the best places to experiment with those kinds of things because you know as vic was saying as well like it's very oriented around certain other use cases that are possible now um with these tools and so yeah i would just say yeah like i'm personally really curious about how we can integrate this infrastructure in more parts of our lives that's kind of what we're trying to do software distribution um and kind of fix those problems but uh also another thing is it's wallets are still hard to like i that's still like i mean that you would think that after all this time it still um would be as easy to you know basically they're still not at the point where if you could ask your grandma to set it up uh then they need to be at that point for us to really hit scale so i think that that's still an important problem that they'll probably take a long time to still figure out but there should be lots of teams trying to and there's not i mean there's lots of great wallets out there not not you know throwing shade or anything i love a lot of these wallets it's just uh you know self-custodizing and stuff like that it's hard so yeah thanks alec and then karen what are the biggest opportunities in europe uh so um as a shim this plug for heiferdab uh so obviously i'm excited about uh no code solutions for uh for building uh applications in in web3 and so it opens up opportunities not only devs but um like any other non-dev uh users who is interested in getting on board to web 3 to be a builder build being a builder in web3 and other than that i'm i'm really uh interested in the field in the potential uh in developing a more efficient market in matching talent with positions either position especially within a dallas because i think now i don't see any i think we're still relying on really web to traditional web 2 solutions for figuring out the matching between talent and contributors and any positions or opportunities within the web story space well um awesome thanks so much i think i i love this point around even if it was a shameless plug i'll i'll still take it i think um you know it's almost like a meta dev tool right where you're not develop we're not even making lives easier for developers but you're making you're turning everyone into a developer and then making their lives easier which um i i love because i'm trying to get as many people um into the space as builders and if we can remove many roadblocks there and some of which might be on the engineering side and then that's awesome and cool i want to thank all of you we're kind of at time and for for joining this panel and kind of sharing your insights and i i learned a ton and i hope and you know you took some of the fears maybe of people and and shown some light on the great opportunities um behind that follow after hackathon and all of you like best of luck with what you're building and and and once again right like proto collapse is still here to swat you guys right like even after the hackathon um and you know it's super great to hear alec that you know you got you're getting some great advice from juan and and and yeah that's that's just awesome right so like um let's let's continue to you know talk and and work together and we want to help you succeed and and i'm super happy that you know you start in a hackathon and and now look at you that's that's really really cool like i'm super super glad to see that and and thank you so much for your time it's um that was awesome thank you cheers pleasure's ours have a good one everyone you