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Ask HN: Have you ever grown a hackathon project into a company?

15 points by blakeeb ↗ HN
I'm in a hackathon right now and the unexpected just happened: Our team's project somehow transacted over $5,000 in one day.

We have very mixed feelings about this.

On one side it's a dream. On the other side, it's a "now what?" moment: Do we continue to grow NutFund.co or do we return to our jobs?

Has anyone in the HN community built a company out of a hackathon project?

Was it with the same team?

Did you drop your job and focus on it right away, or treat it as a side project for a while?

Any advice is highly appreciated, thank you from team NutFund.co

10 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 31.2 ms ] thread
adrianpike
We ran it as a side project for a while, with different folks on the team rotating in and out as they had time.
ahulak
The common problem with hackathons is that you usually don't get to vet your team members/co-founders very well. Building a is a marathon not a sprint, so it's best to make sure your co-founders are really people you want to spend a TON of time with.

Also, transacting $5000 is good, but you probably shouldn't quit your job until you can prove that its replicable and profitable (or at least sustainable).

To be perfectly honest, your phrasing made it sound like you had generated $5k in revenue, in which case quitting would probably be a good idea. $5000 in contingent donations is a whole different animal. If I were you, I would keep working on it during nights and weekends in order to test whether it will continue to gain traction.

blakeeb
Really appreciate the feedback. You're absolutely correct about the recruiting angle.

Hackathons are a great co-founder dating process until the idea gets pregnant.

mckee1
>Hackathons are a great co-founder dating process until the idea gets pregnant.

Haha this is actually a really great way of putting it. It made me laugh out loud.

justinelof
I had a similar situation as @adrianpike. *have started a couple different things at hackathons that became side projects. They were honestly more of a distraction then a real project though. If you enjoy it and learn something by continuing to work on ish, then it's probably worth it.
callmeed
I have a trivia app we built as part of a sports hackathon: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hat-trick-daily-sports-trivi...

We won the first round of the hackathon (lost the finals). We've made a little money on in-app purchases and had an investment offer from one of the judges (we declined).

We still work on the app but no one has dropped their full-time job yet. We're thinking of applying to the Disney accelerator with it.

mckee1
Jesus what did you lose to? That's a really neat app.
daniula
During one of hackathons my team got first place. After that we quit our jobs and studies, joined accelerator, launched real product and after a year got ~$110k funding.
[dead] thinkrb
I recently launched a startup that came out of a hackathon. It was and idea I had for for several months and used the hackathon to get it started. The team meshed well over the weekend but I could see the holes if we stuck together long term. Also, they wanted to do it as a side project whereas I was going to do it full-time.

My advise would be to let everyone think about what they want to do with it and then have a meeting a week or two after the hackathon. Everyone needs to be honest on how much they can contribute, what skills they bring to the team, and how serious/passionate they are about the idea. You'll probably find out that most were really excited that weekend and couple days following but then the excitement begins to fade away.