After the Hackathon
You just spent a whirlwind twenty-four to forty-eight hours building an incredible project and meeting new friends. But now the pizza is gone, the tables are cleared, you might still be running on adrenaline but unsure what to do next. You’re in luck! There are a lot of other things you can do even after the hackathon ends. In this blog we will go through how to wrap up your current project for your portfolio, maintain relationships, and strategies to take your idea further.
Bolster Your Portfolio
Hackathons are a great way to produce projects for your portfolio to show potential employers your creativity and communicate your skills. Some developers code their own websites to showcase their projects. You can choose not to you can create a simple portfolio site using Wix or SquareSpace. Upload a few photos of your project and your contributions, as well as your thought process of why you chose to build this project the way you did.
If you don’t want to make a portfolio website, there are other places where you can host your project to be able to display to potential employers. This includes Github, a platform where developers host their code. Your Github profile shows employers what projects you have worked on.
If you want to help the overall hacker community, you can post your project to Glitch. Glitch combines automated deployment, instant hosting, and collaborative editing. When you host your project on Glitch, you let other people “remix” your project which helps your hack live on in the projects of others.
Turn Teammates Into Term Relationships
Hackathons are a great way to meet people quickly and develop relationships. The next step is to keep these relationships going. Make sure to get teammate emails, LinkedIn contacts, or whatever contact information works best for everyone. These people might want to join you for different meet-ups, or they can continue to be your teammates if you want to continue with your idea. The best way to choose a co-founder is to work with someone you enjoy under pressure, and you have already done just that.
Continue To Build A Community
Hackathons offer the opportunity to make connections with smart, curious people. If you can’t get enough of this energy, head over to the MLH Events page to search for hackathons and workshops near you. If you want to enjoy the hacker culture but also want to get a good night of rest, many communities have Hack Nights, where people come together for a few hours to informally work on projects with each other, many of which you can find through Meet-up.
Connect Your Prototype to a Problem
You have created a cool project, and got great feedback from peers and judges alike. You might wonder whether you want to continue to develop this idea out to be a full-fledged start-up. This means moving away from what you can build to what you should build to make a profitable business. Figuring out what you should build starts with asking people what problems they have that they would pay to have solved.
The first step in this is to find people who you think might want to use your product. This might be very easy or difficult based on the product you created. When you do find them, you should ask them what problems they face that your product might address. Do not immediately jump to showing your product. The best thing you can do is to figure out how these people currently fix the problem they face today. If they are already paying to fix their problem already, there is a larger chance that they might pay for your solution.
After you get some rest (we hope!) you should take these insights and move forward with your project!
