How we created a successful college event with NO experience
One of our main goals for our startup was to build a community of engaging students. Inspired by events we already attended and the friends we made at these events. We decided to host a mini-hackathon for students at our University.
Jigsaw Careers 🧩:
Provides students access to real world problems at startups through challenges. This approach allows startups to validate talent more effectively rather than guessing from endless applications.
1) First is finding the right people to work with
An early stage consultancy firm: Innovation Studios set up by two alumni graduates had reached out to us as they had a similar vision of helping students develop their professional experience through projects.
We began to brainstorm ideas about our software product with them, which is an application validating talent through challenges for startups.
One of our marketing strategies was to run events for students for them to find out about us. Innovation Studios gave us the brilliant idea to test the idea of both the enjoyment of the challenges and events for students.
I cannot stress the importance of the people who you work with. You need people who share your passion and have the same vision. Overcoming setbacks becomes easier and the progress more enjoyable.
2) Planning is crucial
Detailed planning was why the event was a success.
Key Things we had to plan:
- Presentation
- The Challenge Itself
- Food & Drinks
- Marketing
- Prize
- Venue
We had to ensure that the timings of the event were planned correctly. We had 5 hours to fit everything together smoothly so a precise breakdown of the day was crucial.
The most difficult part to plan was the challenge itself. It is fine balance between what people will actually like and what they can do in the time they have. The worst case scenario would be if students find the challenge boring and leave after an hour. An even worse outcome if the challenge is too hard to do and nobody has anything to show at the end.
An important thing to consider is that on the actual day of the event — things arise that weren’t planned for. For example, a team arrived with no technical or design experience. In our marketing, we specified that the mini-hackathon was beginner friendly. However, we didn’t realize how a team with no experience in design or programming would be able to participate.
We had to adapt fast! We decided to help them with using Figma and suggest templates for them to use. Some might say that it wasn’t fair as other teams were designing a landing page from scratch. We felt this was needed to make sure they had a good experience.
One thing we should have planned better was the time when the judging happened. This time felt unplanned and a lot of waiting around was going on. To improve — we should have announced this time as a break where people could go outside for some fresh air.
We were in the basement and it was pretty warm! 🙃
3) It’s all about Marketing
You have a startup onboard, you have a room in the place, and you have some cash. The only thing left yet the most important part is the people.
How do you get people to come?
Imagine you have 0 signups and 7 days left till the event. We needed 25 signups in 1 week — this meant we had to try everything and anything. We started to tell friends, then friends of friends, and started to print flyers and post ads in student WhatsApp group chats.
A significant factor was to prioritize the incentives we were offering.
Incentives included
- Cash Prize
- Pizza
- Meeting New People
- Demonstrating Talent to a Startup
After telling friends to help us — we received feedback that ‘free pizza’ was a big incentive. Using this information, we illustrated the cash prize & pizza on our flyers. That is what helped us grab student’s attention.
During the last 2 days — we hit our 25 signup milestone. We increased the sign up limit and reached 35 signups before the event day.
10 signups in 2 days — crazy!
The flyers and telling friends proved effective as 70% of signups came from these methods. Surprisingly, social media wasn’t effective at all, probably because our reach is still small yet.
Conclusion
Hosting our first challenge as an event was exciting, stressful yet fulfilling.
Overall, the experience was amazing with meeting all the students and seeing the great work they created.
Another goal for the event was to test the enjoyability of challenges. Every time I entered the room, the first thing I noticed was how engrossed people were on their laptops.
I believed what made this event successful was that we were engaged with the students from the get go. We went around asking if anyone needed help, we held great conversations with people, and talked about how important community was to us.
To nurture the community in the future, we plan on hosting more challenging events. For the next event, we want to run a marketing challenge with a consumer startup with at least 50 students.
What would we do differently:
- Start marketing earlier 😁
- Plan the challenge with an actual student
- Have time for personalized feedback for each team
Wish us luck! 💙
