Cancelling the #DoGoodBusiness Challenge

2-days prior to the scheduled start of the #DoGoodBusiness Challenge , I’ve made the difficult decision to call off the event.

Why? We did not get enough registrations to ensure that the competition would be an amazing experience to all participants.

Why did registrations fall short?

Many possible reasons, hard to pin down if there was one main reason, it could have also been a combination of a few of the below:

• It was a paid event.
  • The public was getting used to free virtual events, many other hackathons/startup competitions that moved to virtual also became free.
  • I did not turn it into a free event as I was worried about participants flaking out and ruining the experience for their teammates over the week.
• A week-long is too long/too short
  • Those that are just dabbling in entrepreneurship find a full week too much to commit to.
  • Serious entrepreneurs find a week too short to do solid business development and acquire pilot customers.
• Zoom fatigue
• Bad timing
  • This hackathon was originally planned for the summer but was pushed back due to COVID-19. It would have probably been better to keep it in the summer while people were still motivated to contribute and solve for COVID-19 related problems that have impacted the business community.
  • Momentum has died down now that we have become desensitized to the lifestyle changes that we were forced into.
  • I was hoping to ride the momentum of Vancouver Startup Week (VSW) by scheduling it the weekend after. Event fatigue could have been a reason, there was also another hackathon that happened during the start of VSW that may have reduced demand for our hackathon.
• My fault
  • I did not do a good job putting together, leveraging, and motivating a team of co-organizers/volunteers. Instead, I tried to shoulder too much on my own.
  • Marketing has never been my strong suit.

In reflection, why did I decide to run this hackathon/competition this way?

You’ll notice that I avoided calling the #DGB Challenge a hackathon. I’ll use the word here because startup competitions originated from it.

1. Traditional hackathons are tech-centric. However, this process works great for spurring non-tech innovations as well. I wanted to create a hackathon that would welcome all ideas and entrepreneurs + innovators without technical experience.
2. I believed that 24-48 hours was too short.
   • A longer hackathon would allow for more time to educate and mentor participants so that they could do a better job validating the problem and designing a more relevant solution.
   • More time would allow the teams to gain more traction (pre-orders/pilot projects) and better motivate the teams to continue beyond the competition.
3. Traditional hackathons celebrate the wrong things:
   • Judging criteria is typically pitch heavy. It celebrates teams that are good at communication, planning skills, and design esthetics.
   • I wanted a hackathon that would instead focus more on execution – focusing more on traction, progress, and lessons learned. Why? I’ve observed that many teams who go on beyond startup competitions and form real companies are usually the ones who are better at these.
4. I wanted to encourage and expose entrepreneurs to social entrepreneurship and show them that every business can be impactful.

Do I still believe there is room for this new kind of hackathon?

Yes.

However:

1. It needs to be in-person.
   • Since COVID-19 stared, I have been mentoring/supporting various virtual hackathons. The virtual experience is still lacking and teams don’t get the same level of excitement + bonding that they find in an in-person event.
2. Keep it to a weekend, or make it a full month.
   • Weekend works for the dabblers.
   • A full month is better for serious entrepreneurs. Less intensive and they can have more time to participate while still making time for family/work/other commitments.

What else have I learned about organizing a hackathon?

1. Start by finding mentors, they’re the easiest to bring on-board.
   • Reputable mentors will add credibility to your event and make it easier for you to bring on-board partner businesses/sponsors/participants.
2. Next, find partner businesses.
   • Partner businesses in my case are companies that are willing to work with the teams to help them validate the problems that they’re trying to design solutions for. These businesses are not required to provide any monetary compensation.
   • Having reputable businesses further help add credibility and get participants excited.
   • These businesses could become the team’s first customers.
   • Or could end up hiring some of your participants or acquiring some of the innovation that comes out of the hackathon.
3. Sponsors were nearly impossible to obtain as companies scrambled to reallocate their budget to deal with the changes brought about by COVID-19.
4. Lastly, promote to 1 primary market.
   • I made the mistake of taking advice from too many people while planning this hackathon. Many encouraged me to involve academia + startups + enterprise to have them collaborate on creating better solutions.
   • Professors don’t care. Students aren’t ideal participants either, they won’t continue on beyond the competition to be real founders – their priority is getting a job/paying off their student loan.
   • Enterprise would rather their employees participate in an internal hackathon. For external hackathons, they would rather participate passively as partner businesses and use the event as a recruitment platform.
   • I should have stuck to my goal of focusing on entrepreneurs and making this an event that would help spur more real companies to get off the ground.

What’s next? How will I continue to contribute to the startup ecosystem in Vancouver/Canada?

I’ll be actively mentoring and supporting the following organizations in the next few months:

• Cooperathon, the Canadian-wide open innovation challenge organized by Desjardins.
• FoundersBoost Vancouver
• BCITSA
• Futurpreneur