Hackathon Sponsorships
My experience with LA Hacks Fundraising
You’re hosting a hackathon, welcome yourself to the chaos!
I was in-charge of Business Development for the second edition of LA Hacks — April 11-13, Pauley Pavilion 2014 and it was an incredible experience. We raised nearly a quarter of a million from companies like Quixey, Private Internet Access, Uber, Bloomberg, Daqri, Cisco, Flipboard, Nextdoor, Pritzker Group, among others. Fundraising is merely a tool to ensure that students have an incredible experience while allowing them to interact with (lots of) mentors and (some) recruiters from some of best technology companies. Try to make fundraising a tool rather than a goal. Plus, remember these companies are helping us build this community and they have to sponsor a bunch of other hackathons too. Play nice. Also check out Ishaan Gulrajani’s “Hackathon Budget”, this post by MLH which also better fleshes out how to do cold email.
To Begin
Make a small team of hustlers.
Create a simple yet elegant pitch deck which will get companies excited about your event. It should provide them information about how they can get involved and at what price levels. I’d advise having a special tier for startups from around your school to get involved. They probably won’t have the most money but will definitely improve your attending hacker’s experience. They’ll probably come with mentors, stay the whole time, and help students even after the event. If you’re unsure how to price these feel free to checkout the websites of other hackathons, they tend to be hidden, but Google can help.
Approach Sponsors
Cold emails that are short and simple, introductions and career fairs are your best approach channels. Your goal should be to get them on the phone, tell them why this event is going to be so baller, and how it just doesn’t make sense for them to miss attending it. Companies want to be there as much as you do! Feel free to send out the presentation after you’ve spoken to them. From our experience cold emails (see below) definitely do work, but the conversion rate is lower than when one participating sponsor introduces you to another. Also make sure to have your site is up, you have people signed up and location finalized before you start.
Start closing, don’t stop until the day of the event — contracts, collect money before the event via check, credit card (Spacebox), or PayPal. You’ll see though that different companies want things to be customized for them — try and accommodate these request if you can. But don’t feel too bad to tell them no if you feel like it’s not fair to other sponsors. Some companies will want to want to do other options instead of cash — make these kind of deals exceptions, only if they’re buses (MLH helped us here), venue (UCLA) or something which would be central to executing or making the event an even better experience (maybe even resumes storage and re-distribution — we used Readyforce). Also, I’d advise you to partner with MLH — they will be of a lot of help.
Legal — you definitely want to work with someone who will ensure that you’re protected and so are your attendees. You’d also want to do this to ensure that sponsors don’t back out a day before the event, clearly conveyed what benefits they’re entitled to and their responsibilities, etc.
Keep sponsors happy, build a relationship — find out what they’re looking for. Giving them a little extra would make them remember you and this event for the future.
Plan everything — Who’s opening, when is everybody’s API talks, and breakout sessions. Sometimes the swag will come earlier, figure out a way to store it. Find out which engineers from which companies are coming in order to feature them for API during the hackathon on the mobile app, and they can easily be called on.
The week before the event make sure to send out these logistics to all the companies/mentors — including a map pointing out where they’re going to be at the venue. Also probably send out a note to all attendees about which sponsors are going to be attending — sometimes people have always wanted to work on some API but never got the chance to and this will get them excited and ensure that they come. (Helps with reducing attrition of signups to attendees!)
The Day Of
Try and have an hour before the hacking starts to allow students to go around and visit the sponsor booths and interact with the sponsor, collect some swag, etc.
Make sure to meet with each of the sponsors yourself — you’ve probably just had phone conversations with them. It’s nice to put a face to a name ☺
Collect data (will have to be done through mobile app) — who used which API, which companies contacted attendees for interviews — on the spot and later did you sign at a company because of meeting them at the hackathon?
Schedule tech talks/workshops appropriately
Figure out distribution of prizes — try and have API prizes be given away by mentors from that company. It’d be awesome to put them in the spotlight — they’re probably going to be awake longer than you at event and helping students learn ☺
Send thank you to both the attendees and sponsors asking for feedback — positive and negative. Try to quantify it. It will help for when you’re hosting the next round.
Feel free to get in touch with me if you’re interested in putting on or sponsoring a hackathon — me@varadhja.in!
Disclaimer: This is in no way an exhaustive guide, just some basics to get you started
