HN Explorer

How to win $50k in 11days, 1hour, 20min & 37seconds?

11 points by jameshighsmith ↗ HN
Our company has entered the GE competition and we are ranked 7th out of 2,224 teams globally (the top 3 teams are questionable).

We need about 5k+ more votes in 11days, 1hour and 20min (~1vote/3.168min) to win $50k seed cap. Currently, we have 2,018 votes (2.1%), but clearly these are not enough. We set up a dinky page (www.highsmithenergy.com/vote) to help people of my parents age through the voting process, but something a bit more is necessary.

Technically, we can't pay anyone for voting, but we can pay (if we win) for consulting us on how to get these 5k votes... and we'll need some engineers to help us build out if we do.

Thought of no better community to turn to. All and any ideas encouraged here or infohighsmithenergycom.

8 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 27.5 ms ] thread
sabj
Make a persuasive video pitch, add geekery, put it on Reddit. Flawless Victory.

Make the check for my fee payable to...

n.b., do be careful or someone like 4chan might get wind of it and decide to hack / game the system in order to have something strange win to prove their ability to manipulate the online attention economy.

jameshighsmith
video on the way (and so is your check...) the question is how to encourage 4chan to back us? that would be massive
stevederico
I would flush out some more detail on exactly what you would do with the money and how it will change the world.

A pro looking site will go a long way. Go to http://themeforest.net/ and grab a nice clean theme and set up a facebook page as well.

Once you have a well formulated plan, Hit twitter and reach out to thought leaders and well respected blogs in the industry. Pitch your idea to these leaders and ask them to support you in your progress. A few key re tweets will yield 5k+ votes in under 11 days no problem.

I did a little digging and here are some blogs/twitter pages who I would reach out to:

@cleantechies (4k followers) http://cleantechies.com/

@OnEarthMag (3k followers) http://www.onearth.org/

@greentechmedia (9k followers) http://www.greentechmedia.com/

@GavinNewsom (1.3M followers) Might be a long shot, but it's worth a try

Again, I would do anything I could to reach out and get the support from these people. There are plenty more blogs out there, google is your friend. Best of luck.

pontifier
What is this competition? This is the first I have ever heard of it, and there is no link to the competition website.
jameshighsmith
http://bit.ly/9t0CIz is our voting site, links to GE.

$50k for the idea with the most votes $100k for top 5 best ideas, voted on by judges $200m venture fund for most promising ideas Partnership potential with GE.

ends september 30th

alexwyser
Hey. I am a web designer and I can create videos, so if you need either of these services, please contact me. My email is alexwyser@gmail.com

For more votes, other than a better website and an interesting video, you should market like crazy on facebook, twitter and some relevant blogs.

Also, I not entirely sure how legit these are, I suggest you might try the offers on gigbucks.com of promoting your website on facebook, at worst you lose $5 or $10