Pioneer: How it works, thoughts and takeaways
Today at 3am EST was the deadline for the last progress update on Pioneer, a monthly tournament that’s building a community of people who’re working on interesting projects. Daniel, Pioneer’s founder, describes it best by saying Pioneer is “trying to find the lost Einsteins of the world.”
If it wasn’t for Daniel, I wouldn’t have participated in the first month, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to write this blog post.
I’m thankful to him for convincing me to apply, despite my late application, because Pioneer pushed me to work faster than I’d ever worked on a project before.
Applying to Pioneer
For anyone who’s applied to YC, Pioneer’s application is very similar but much shorter. There’s no required video, and once the application is filled out, you’re in the tournament. There’s no vetting process or waiting period, which is really nice because it doesn’t discourage applicants from building their projects if they don’t get accepted.
There’s a progress bar at the top of the home screen that visualizes the timeline of the tournament. This definitely adds to the video-game aesthetic, because it shows how far along a participant progressed, and when they can get extra chances to boost their score by voting.
On the left are the tasks participants need to complete that week. Other than the progress updates, there are some optional tasks that give points to boost rankings in the game-like tournament (like a personality test, a puzzle test, and peer reviewing progress updates).
The right side of the page shows your ranking, age, who’s ranked above and below you, total points you’ve accumulated, and a breakdown of how you got the points you have.
On the official leaderboard page, you can see the participants aren’t from one geographic area or age bracket. There are 50-year-old participants working on the cryptocurrency/blockchain category, and teenagers working on healthcare.
It’s probably one of the more inclusive communities I’ve participated in.
It also places incredible confidence in participants that Pioneer is really trying to build “a home for the ambitious outsiders of the world.”
Progress Updates
Every Monday at 3am EST (midnight PST) is the deadline for turning in weekly progress updates. The pictures above show the kind of questions participants had to answer in progress updates.
Previously, updates were anonymously shown to those peer reviewing updates and voting, but this last week, participants were given the option of choosing whether or not they wanted feedback from the community.
After submitting progress updates, there’s a 24 hour period (previously 12 hours) to peer review updates and vote on them.
Since participants aren’t allowed to discuss any of the projects on Pioneer, I won’t be able to post screenshots. Essentially, a voter would be given two participants, A and B. There’s no information that hints the participants’ rankings or pseudonyms in the tournament. After reading their progress updates, the voter casts their ballot, keeping the person AND the project in mind.
The nice thing about progress updates is the feedback participants get from the community. Pioneer conveniently sends an email after the end of the voting period with the comments some people left after voting for your project.
Ranking and Votes
So, how do you move up in the rankings?
I mentioned earlier a few optional things you could do to raise your ranking: the personality test is worth 100 points, voting gives you a maximum of 50 points each week (200 total), and you could score up to 100 points on a puzzle test.
Even though these are optional, I highly recommend doing them because they can give you that one extra point that boosts your ranking ten places. I only got 5 points from voting the first week, because the voting deadline was only 12 hours long (which was highly inconvenient) until they changed it to a full 24 hours.
Most points, however, come from other participants and experts. If a voter chose your project over another high-ranking participant, you’d get more points.
Expert voting doesn’t begin until tomorrow (after the tournament ends), and it carries a little more weight than peer voting. Each application is reviewed at least three times, and throughout the week, the leaderboards are refreshed at 3pm EST (noon PST) as the experts vote on applications. October 8th is the conclusion of expert voting.
What does Pioneer offer?
You might be thinking that anyone can do this on their own, and they don’t need to go through Pioneer. I’ll agree with you that they can, and just like YC isn’t for everyone, Pioneer isn’t for everyone either. Some people don’t have the time and can only chip away on their project once a month, and that’s okay.
Here’s what I think is good about Pioneer:
- Pioneer gives your project exposure. As cliche as that sounds, it’s a very good thing. Other participants can check out your project or company through links that you provide, and you can get honest feedback on what you’re working on. Not only participants, but experts like Marc Andreessen (Founder, a16z), Mathilde Collin (Founder, Front), Tyler Cowen (Author and Economics Professor at GMU), Saku Panditharatne (Founder, Asteroid), Patrick Collison (Founder, Stripe), Balaji Srinivasan (CTO, Coinbase), and many more look at the progress updates and vote on projects they think are interesting.
- Accountability. Much like what Product Hunt Makers or WIP Chat does, Pioneer leaves you accountable to complete the weekly goals you’ve set for yourself. You don’t get penalized if you don’t complete them, because everyone knows that life gets in the way. The video-game aspect of the tournament further incentivizes you to complete your goal to get a higher ranking, much like you’d want to happen if you were playing a game, and this might be my favorite feature of Pioneer.
- $5000 + ticket to Silicon Valley + mentorship. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration when I say most of the participants signed up because of the money they could get coming out of the tournament, plus the round-trip ticket to Silicon Valley to get mentorship from experts. After the expert voting period is over, Pioneer will contact applicants about the status of their application, and (I assume) that’s when they’ll tell participants whether or not their project has been given funding. It isn’t exactly clear how many projects will get funded, or whether there will be a second step to get the funding.
- Presentation day. Three months after the end of the tournament, participants get to present their projects to a the world via a livestream. I’m sure that a lot of people are curious at what comes out of this tournament, because not everyone in it is building a company or from a certain demographic.
Thoughts post-tournament
Overall, I really liked the tournament. I got constructive feedback from the participants, though I wish that we weren’t limited to a 140 character comment in the voting section. As another Pioneer participant, James, said, “140 characters is not enough to provide comprehensive and actionable reviews of a participant’s progress.”
The video game-style aspect made it exciting and fun to build a project, and I was exposed to what a whole lot of people were working on and what challenges they faced. It was like a giant beta testing network.
If you have a research project, startup idea, or literally anything else, Pioneer is something that you should definitely consider. You’ve got nothing to lose by participating.
As someone who participated and was originally hesitant doing so, I highly recommend for you apply for the next tournament!
