Dream big, focus, make it complete | Aditya Mohanty | ETHMumbai 2024

Can everyone hear me loud and clear at the back? Raise your hand. Awesome. Awesome. Can I hear a huge round of applause for the ETH Mumbai team?

[applause] I see a lot of people are not from Mumbai. So, please huge uh welcome to everyone. I hope you like the Dohole and the flavor of the hackathon is very Mumbaicentric. So really love the wipe. I'm Adita.

I'm the co-founder of the product folks. We run one of the world's largest product communities with over 200,000 members. We also run something called as the product house which is our web three arm where we help people learn, earn and build in web three. Uh so super excited about this hackathon first of all. uh I was told that I I need to talk about building products but rather than giving advice I would rather uh say that you have already crossed a slight hurdle that comes in the way right when we are building communities when we see people around the biggest hurdle is that the ideas stay in their minds right they don't do anything about it so all of you coming here over a weekend wanting to build uh is already a step in the right direction so congrats and kudos to all of you uh who have come here to build and uh if I were a part of this hackathon.

I would tell myself only three things. Uh and those are that be a little bold, be a little creative, be a little experimentative. Uh we are we set our bars very low in terms of where we want to be. Uh right and there is literally no downside. You're here to have fun and build.

So think a little higher. Aim for something bigger. Hopefully it will turn out to be something big. Right? Uh second, don't be distracted.

Focus on only one thing. I know all of you have very creative team members. All of you want to do several things at once. Uh but be a little more focused. Do one thing well, do it right.

Uh that'll hopefully help you build better products, right? Not just for this hackathon, but everything that you do uh beyond as well. Uh so be don't be distracted. Focus on only one key thing. Do it well, right?

Third is you're here to build a MVP, right? And the purpose of MVP is to showcase potential. The purpose of MV MVP is to validate your hypothesis. So focus only on building an MVP and not think about how do I scale this, how do I manage this when it grows and anything that comes after building and scaling a product. Right?

So focus very very heavily on building a really good MVP. Right? And lastly, this is not product advice. This is community advice. Whenever I go to a event, whenever I go to a hackathon personally, my aim with that is that by the end of it, I need to make three good friends, right?

So by the by the time you leave this hackathon make sure that you make at least three good friends right that's all that it takes to ensure that you are in the right circles that you build the right products that will help you eventually after this hackathon and beyond as well and personally I am from Mumbai building from Mumbai born and brought up here uh so this city is very close to my heart uh it feels so nice to see all of you here coming to the city and building this uh with all of us together I know know that in the last few years Mumbai has kind of had had this notion that uh the tech uh the real tech or the real products are not being built here that is completely wrong these guys have proven it over this weekend uh some of the biggest products I don't need to tell you names but uh all of you would be knowing about polygon the way they have built and scaled their roots were from here uh Shardium a lot of founding members are based out of the city was again huge company in this space push protocol uh a lot of companies being built out of Mumbai scaling uh I saw the tagline building from Mumbai for the world and that is exactly what's happening uh so super super excited about seeing this ecosystem grow thrive not just sustain uh but be at the forefront of it so definitely rooting for all of you and if you forget everything that I said and keep only one thing in mind uh just remember that this could be a start of something really big a project here could become something as largest polygon and bigger. So keep that in mind and have fun while building. So I will leave you with this thought. But before I leave, I again want all of you to have a huge round of applause for the Heath Mumbai team. [applause] I know how difficult it is.

I know how difficult it is to pull off a hackathon, a event like Chandesh mentioned. It started with a tweet. I remember him texting me on Telegram saying that we are planning something like this. And I was amazed by it because it not just takes an idea but a whole village to pull off something like this. So kudos to all the volunteers.

I am around uh for all of you if you need any help not just with this hackathon but anything beyond. Happy to help. All the best for the hackathon. Have fun building and see you again. Yeah.