So You've Won a Hackathon Prize: Now What? with Olga Vazquez, Alfonso Campenni, Paris Rouzati..

Hi everyone. Do you hear? Do you hear us? Yes, sound is good. I see Oh, wow.

Great. Thanks for being here. Welcome. I love I love that it's the last day, last slot, and you're all ready to celebrate. You know, let's let's celebrate in a couple of hours, but for now uh we're here to tell you So, you've won a hackathon prize, all of you.

And uh now what? Uh and in order to illuminate that, we have a great panel. I just want to make sure that this works. Yes, it works. Closer.

Closer. Thank you. Thank you, Alfonso. Thank you. I need notes.

So, we have a great panel. We have Paris Rousati, who needs no introduction, but you know, she's the head of ecosystems at Aave Companies, and of course, that doesn't mean only Aave, but you know, it means Lens, the Lens protocol and the Lens ecosystem. So, we're very happy that you could do this. Then we also have Michelle Fasilish, who is, you know, a great great uh friend to begin with, but also the founder of Artemis Ventures, and uh a very notorious Squiggle lover, and a member of the Art Blocks community. And well, she's onboarded multi-million, you know, uh user products into web uh markets, not only web 3, but also web 1 and web 2.

So, she has a long long tradition. And then we have Alfonso, who's also a very well-loved uh character. Um maybe not in the generative arts business just yet, but he's more of a social innovator and educator. He's doing great work in Latin America. Uh we love working with him as well.

We teach together sometimes, so it's really a pleasure to have all of three all of them uh here. And let me tell you maybe a little bit about Yeah, why we're here. So, I'm Olga Vasquez. Uh I'm knowledge manager at a fund. We are Theta Capital and we invest solely in this space.

That means investing in Web3, blockchain. We do this across all verticals. That's how most of us know each other. And that means that my job is to know what's going on in the industry. And the way venture capital figures out we're doing the right thing is by looking at this one metric.

And it's called developer activity. Now, what happens with Oops. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Developer activity. And let me Maybe I'll feel more comfortable doing this. Yes. And you have here the key metric is even though we are looking at um market capitalization rates that are maybe 5 years back, we're looking at, you know, we're down in the market, especially in the liquid market, to 2018, 2019 levels. What we see is the developer activity is up by 300%.

This All these metrics are which is what every VC is looking at. We know we're going to be okay because of this. Uh there have been, you know, you can follow the Alchemy reports. Alchemy does a great job reporting on this. This graph is from uh specifically from Electric Capital.

Their their report on 2022, which came out just in January. Now, this brings us to the whole hackathon phenomenon because nine out of 10 of these developers whoever commit code actually have taken part in some form of a hackathon. They have won prizes, maybe. And most of them will fail. So, to um help us with this uh and Paris, I'm going to walk a little bit through this.

This is This are your your introductions, which I think everybody knows and we have there we have them on the uh on the web as well. And that's myself. Okay. So, the point of today is to actually talk about both myths and mistakes. So, if we have if we if we have to start with Paris first of all, because we're going to touch on three what we think are three critical blind spots of very early stage devs and founders, which are capital, so the big three C's, capital, consumer-facing, and community.

So, each each one of our you know, panelists is going to address one of them. So, Paris, to start with you, um capital, money. Let's talk money. What do you think is the biggest myth when it comes to early stage teams and fundraising? Yeah, so I'm going to start answering this question by just a little story, and I just remembered because my friend Ian is in the audience here.

Uh my first ETHDenver was actually Was it last year or the year before? And I did it virtually, and I actually hacked with a group of internet friends, including Ian right there. And after we hacked at the hackathon, um it was kind of like peak bull market, so um everyone was reaching out to me, all these investors were reaching out to me saying, "Oh, you know, you did this hackathon project. Oh, you're doing this NFT project. Oh, this, like, let's throw money at you."

But now things are a little bit different, and I had to do a lot of introspection at the time as well, and figure out A, do I really want to be a founder? And B, is it really the time to be raising money? And I think the biggest myth that a lot of people think is that, "Okay, I won this thing. Um now I should go be a founder and raise money and dedicate the next 10 years of my life to this dream that I worked on um at the duration of the hackathon." Which is not true.

Right. So, Could be true, but not always. So, maybe everybody who wins a hackathon should keep their jobs? Yeah. Depends if you have one.

Um but but yes, I I would say um it's it's definitely important uh if you're going to take the leap into working and and founding a business, founding a startup, that's a lot of responsibility. Um, it's responsibility to yourself, it's responsibility to the greater ecosystem, to the people that you hire. So, absolutely, you need to do a lot of, um, soul-searching and and think about do you have what it takes to be a founder? And do you want to do it because it is a huge commitment. And then do you want to go on this, um, journey of fundraising and finding product market fit and all that jazz.

So, let's say that we're ready. Let's say that I'm I'm ready. I've decided, you know, I've won this prize, um, you know, what how should I approach fundraising? And or should I stay in the hackathon wheel for a bit longer? So, I would say it really depends on what you're building and and and your team.

Um, and you know, obviously how passionate you are about your idea. So, let's say you're super passionate, you won, um, you're really feeling like this is a good idea, and you want to, you know, go and spend your life life next 10 years building building whatever it is you're building. Um, first of all, there's loads of investors always at hackathons. Some of them are judges. Um, I actually judged a lot I think the majority of ETHGlobal hackathons last year as an investor.

Um, and so, we're around, we're in the Discords, we're watching. So, if you're lucky, investors will start reaching out to you, especially if you're a super talented builder. And at the earliest stage, it's not necessarily just about your idea because ideas really do change a lot in the early stage. So, it is about who you are and how you're presenting yourself as a builder. And if you're lucky, investors will reach out to you.

Um, if you're if you're not, you know, building in public as they say, and if you're not promoting yourself, and if you're not in the Discords, and not, you know, people aren't reaching out to you, you have to figure out what it is you're building and find investors that specialize in that and and cold reach out. And you have to be okay with not getting any answers on Twitter, not getting answers on um on email, getting them to send you their junior associate, never hearing back, and the whole journey kind of starts there. Um and if you get lucky, and then, you know, you start conversations and you go from there. And that's through Twitter. I would say you could do it through Twitter, you could do it through Lens, you could do it on Discord.

Um you know, I think it's important in our ecosystem to really build in public and and be active and show what you're doing. Um and so, yeah, you have to be where the noise is, for sure. What would you say is the perfect recipe for building in public? Um I think so, I think here in in Web3 in particular, the technology is open source, so it's showing that you pay attention to other things outside of the tech. So, you pay attention to UX, you're building a small community, even though even if it's 50 people, they're active, they care about what you're doing, you're showing a little bit of traction.

Um it isn't being on Twitter Spaces 24/7 every opportunity ever, because investors also get scared of that. It's about showing that you're strategic um and that you really have the knowledge for whatever it whatever topic area it is that you're kind of going after. So, you you mentioned you've been a judge in probably every single hackathon in the last season or two. So, um can you give us some examples of projects that you think have achieved this, have really excelled at doing this, and and tell us also why they're good, why and are they succeeding? Are they ready for your fund raising?

Yeah, I mean, I think some of my favorite it's really interesting cuz once you start judging hackathons you start seeing repeat hackers everywhere. So Justin in Denver I saw people I judged in Bogota and in Mexico and you know, I always when I was an investor active really active general partner at IDEO for me it was like a people game because it's early stage and so just seeing people build again and again and again and and build challenging things again and work with different teams. That is like a good signal for me not necessarily that they have this one idea and it worked the first time and it's getting traction. It's like I I like to pick you know, the builders and then hey meet with them and cultivate a relationship with them and see like what what is it that they want to do next? You know, there's definitely a lot in the ecosystem for lens a lot of a lot of people have been building on top of lens.

Lens has the power to make any transaction a social experience. So it's really really powerful and so we've seen a lot of people build on top of lens and I particularly love lens because I see a lot of women also hacking on lens which is awesome and because it's a social protocol you know, we see a lot of women female builders and they're caring about things like UX and community things that kind of come natural to us and we care about it and and they're building really cool projects one of which I think just launched today or it's launching today. It's called Astria and it's by a woman named Maren Altman and she is a crypto astrologer and it's a really That's that's a new one. Yeah, but it's really cool project basically you put in your you know, your where you were born and the time and the whole thing and you get your astrology and it's a soul bound token on lens and she's building a whole community around around that and it's a super unique. That sounds brilliant.

Really like think Well, let's move on to Michelle, because I I think you've touched on Paris has touched upon a few things that are very have a lot to do with user base consumer and consumer facing properties. So, Michelle, from your point of view, what do you think is the biggest priority for these teams when it comes to building consumer facing products? I think the keyword, and you mentioned it Paris, is UX. UX It's UX. Did I mention UX?

It's UX. And especially in the space where we're at right now, it usually tends to be the last thing that they they think about. And an engineer is conceiving how to basically craft the technology, but not thinking how the user is going to actually adopt it. Your product is only as good as the adoption it receives. And I think that we can see that, for example, in a consumer product that that we can all relate to is MetaMask.

MetaMask can be the biggest one, but it's not the best one. And I think that my prediction would be that eventually others will tackle the design element, and we will see major adoption. We will see major onboarding to our space, and that's when the critical mass will come. UX. Wonderful.

And when it comes to the the founders themselves, or you know, the visionaries themselves, what do you think I mean, what is the most the most underrated quality, you know, for these I mean, we're talking about, you know, being ready for capital now. What do they need in order to be ready for building great consumer facing products? I guess many of the mistakes that I see is that they reach that point thinking they know what they have. Uh one of the biggest keywords for this would be adaptability. And in web two we talked about being nimble and flexible and lean, the famous lean startups from the web 2 era.

It applies to us as well. Meaning that the product might not even be what you think it is. What do you mean the product is not what you think it is? Well, in my experience, once you unleash it to the product to the to the consumer and I'm not necessarily thinking about the testing of an MVP, but actual hands-off consumers, they will decide what your product is and I have a couple of examples again. yeah, please tell us again.

Of products that I'm sure most of us, if not all of us, already use. Twitter is the main example that I can give you. Twitter was never born to be a chat app. Twitter actually was born to be the communication application inside a company for engineers to communicate with project managers. We all know that, you know, engineers, you can only say so much before they actually blow everything into their particular vision.

So, another example is in So, you mean that's why it had only 140 characters? That's absolutely true. So, the devs couldn't screw it up. Project manager Yeah, project manager said we only if if you cannot say what you need to an engineer in 40 words, then you don't know how to ask what you need. And that's exactly where it has where it started with 40.

Instagram was another example that was not born to give you filters and social media and it was actually conceived by the owner for uh connoisseurs and and for collectors of scotch and whiskey. Yeah, I mean, he practically built filters so that the picture of your whiskey bottle looked nicer. And that's exactly the example that I can give you that once you unleash it, once you let your product run free, let people use it, destroy it, and and dismember it, then you'll through the feedback and read through feedback, read the good things, but read the bad things first, and learn those bad things so that you can actually come back and and give them a product they need. And in terms of team building, you know, in order to achieve all of this, you need great teams. So, what do you think is a job description that is missing from all these early stage teams?

Well, they're very much a diluted ghost, and it's a probably an invisible role in most of the executive teams, but it's a vision keeper. A vision keeper that will help in this from my era, I learned that from Steve Jobs in which, you know, when he was fired from Apple and he was building next computer, he basically realized that they are the people building the product are the worst people to stay on track and to be loyal to what their actual evolution is. So, yeah, I mean Is this is this kind of like an advisor role or somebody you hire for? Is there a head hunter for vision keepers? It it can manifest in different ways.

keeper? It has to be the CEO. If it's not the CEO, you're Thank you. There you go. There you go.

Now, I think that the the also problem is that, you know, if you don't have that vision kept and and and and guarded, you can run into a lot of problems very fast. And I think that a sinking boat, or if you don't actually validate your product and you don't align the incentives with the business requirements or the marketing requirements, it can very easily hit troubled waters. And the worst mistake that I can see is for CEOs and founders to actually enslave themselves to the product. If you cannot see that the product is gaining traction or it's gaining the the audience that you're going after, let it sink. Don't sink more money into it because ultimately it will not become more buoyant.

It will just sink you with it. Excellent advice. So, uh Alfonso, moving on to you and I want to move on to a slide also. We have a This is great participation. Thank you.

The level of excitement has increased, you know, by a measure of at least 10x. So, Alfonso, um let me move over to your slide. I'll I'll stay here with with the slide and with you because Okay, I will I will move my finger and I'm saying Can you Can you move Yes. So, what I would like for you to tell us is that we've put these bullets together because you know, rather than asking you something, what I would really love for you is to share with us what you think is a community building roadmap, you know, for any of these projects. GM to everybody.

I'm very happy to be here. Um yeah, we were I was discussing how to create, in a nutshell, how to build a community. Um if you have won a hackathon, a bunch of people, like 100 or 200 people, have heard about your project, but then you have to go deeper to um I mean, like a a big event like this one, Ethereum Denver or Devcon, and try to go deeper and try to find the people that have interest in common with your project. But not only the people that you have uh common interest in your in your project, uh also you have to talk with your competitors. It's very important not only to talk and try to onboard to your um allies, okay?

It's very important to build a strong community and a long-term community to talk to everybody. Yeah? Um That includes your competitors? Yeah, including your competitors because your competitors could be part of your community, too, because if they shine to your communicate like your Discord channel and they start like giving you feedback about what the things that you are doing good or bad. It is like the thing that you can build a strong community there and this like I think it's a very It's you can grow a very I mean like very good clearly with competitors and allies.

Okay, clear. What What is the next step? The next step is um where Well, this is like a very good places where you can find these allies or the projects that you have common things like I mean if you your project is about uh zero knowledge, you can walk through East Chamber, the first floor in the hundreds of booths that you may know uh these days and you will and I'll talk with CK Cink about what are you going to do and that's it's potentially um they could be part of your community or maybe they could be part of a future partnership with these guys because you can uh prove some solutions of or you can prove some problems they have that you have a bunch of solutions to give the to the those projects like CK Cink or your vision uh with I know you you build like a a recently new project um you're you're you're here in a very big event talking with the big big big big projects like I don't know CK CK Cink, Lens Protocol, Ave. Uh I see Algorand, too. So, this is the This is the way This is the place where you have to be if you have to if you want to build and to to talk with the people that is uh involved in the in the whole ecosystem in the whole web 3 ecosystem.

But tell us about Okay, once we've identified this community, which might be just as relevant that it is made up of your direct competitors, how do we inspire them and what does clear roles mean to you? Yeah, you can inspire them like assigning like clear roles in your community. I mean, imagine you create like Discord channels and you start like trying to find different profiles like PM, marketing, communicators, design, UX, a lot of different multitasking profiles. So, you have to assign them these these roles are clearly so they they can feel that they are really valuable for your project. Um and they can they can add value to your project that if they feel like comfortable with your mission and they and your values.

All right, we have permanent communication. Yeah, if we if we start like talking like tools communication for the Sorry, the permanent communication, this is a very important thing in your community. You have to create like um I know, Discord channels, Telegram, Notion, GitHub where you can create and do like brainstorming with your community and is a two-way communication between the you you have the idea and you are onboarding your your your community to your to your project. So, this must be like a long-term and permanent communication with them. It's not one day that you talk with them and that's it.

You have to take this like a real show to talk to everybody uh for the beginning. Then, when when your project start like growing, it's like there will be a roles for that. Excellent. Can you talk a little bit about incentives? I think this is a very relevant category.

Yeah. Yeah, incentives is what I think that what can be like a long-term in your community because different people moves by different things. Not everybody's there like for financial incentives or social reputation incentives or I don't know, education to add some education skills. So, you have to be clever if you are in a in a core team to identify those those incentives that the people is trying to find. If you are like if you are your community is trying to find some incentive financial incentive, maybe you should try to figure how to distribute economics or pay them or tokens.

Or if they are like trying to to build like a reputational social reputational, you have to make like gamification or leaderboard with POAPs or OATs or I don't know, using Galaxy maybe. Uh yeah, and if you are like the your community is trying to build educational they're trying to I don't know, to learn something from your community, you can like I don't know, include some scholarships and try to to make So, invest in human capital. Invest in your invest in your community. And what do we have as sense of community ownership? Yeah, I thought of the sense of community the ownership that has been like crossed from the whole community when this born and the long-term community people then inside your community have to feel like they are valuable for you and they are adding value to your community to your project.

So, this is like how do you get how do you spread this this decision how do you spread this ownership to your community? It's like making part of the decisions. It's not that easy so that easy but you can start like create create creating like small This is No, it's fabulous. It's fabulous. Okay.

Well, we'll give it a couple of seconds. This is This is part of adaptability. Yeah. And and sense of uh you know, decision-making because we we just stopped this. Uh this is one of the most I think important things that the your community has to have this sense of ownership.

I I I collaborate in a lot of communities and I really feel this that I could talk with everybody about everything and it's like equals I feel like that. Alfonso, you're you're actually a member of many many communities not only I mean in LatAm mostly but also throughout and I just want to bring this up just to wrap up as well because I think we are pretty much out of time but I mean get involved not not only because all of this is a really common community builder you know, from the ground effort not only of course the Lens community but we have a Skip we have proof of integrity Quirk ID which are projects that you are involved with. We also have Metaphor Academy where you know, we all have our teaching stints and before we say goodbye, can I ask each one of you to just give us you know, from your point of view what is the biggest mistake you'd like to you know, tell somebody please avoid this or the biggest myth that you'd like to debunk? As a as a gifting you know, as a parting gift. Um I don't know.

I think just keep going and um try not to to give up because if you definitely if you want to be a founder, you're going to have to face a lot of rejection. Um and so if your first idea isn't doesn't work, keep going. Um and then just one more thing that I wanted to say, there's a really important talk happening after this. So, please stick around for that if you can um and listen to Jerel's talk. Absolutely.

We have JJ founders after this. Everybody, please support. I would agree with Paris. You keep going and you grind and eventually you're going to understand it. However, you want to hack a thought.

You didn't just build Facebook or Lens. So, it's very important that you don't get drunk with your own Kool-Aid. You have to be humble and open for criticism and again, adaptability and concentrate on the product. Alfonso? And to close, yeah.

I I think sometimes that the project leaders tend to think that they are like the product and not the whole idea that they build with a team. And sometimes that could make some friction between the community and you It had to be like very careful when you are like trying to long-term community to what to do. You have to be very clever to find those insights. So, I think that's that's pretty everything. Thank you so much.

I I forgot. I have some merch and a surprise for those who attend this talk. those who now and for the next talk. For those who like Mexican tequila. Thanks.

Thanks everyone. Big thanks everyone. Big big round of applause. This was great. Thank you.

Thank you.