Hacking a Hackathon — 4 stages to keep on track and deliver something… anything…
“Dear Victoria and Annette,
Congratulations on your success in the enerthon! The prototype your team developed to improve cross-border planning for charging infrastructure is impressive…”
It feels nice and slightly disorientating to open an email like this after weeks of fumbling your way through a month-long hackathon. When everything you’re pulling together feels like complete nonsense, and when Annette has explained something to you for the sixth time and you still don’t have a clue what she’s talking about, and when you’re explaining something to Annette for the sixth time and realise you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, it feels nice to know that you got somewhere in the end.
So, a quick update: a few months ago we formed (dream) Team Budo and entered a Franco-German hackathon. As you may have guessed from the opening, I am pleased to share that we won. It gave me five minutes of fame amongst my extended family (a major accolade), and we are each now the proud owners of 500 euros of German or French rail vouchers in the midst of a global lockdown, so will probably remain proud owners for quite some time. Despite the slightly misplaced prize it was a hugely rewarding experience. Personally I learnt a huge amount and, jokes aside, I am incredibly excited for my future backpacking adventure through Bavaria.
First of all, meet the team;
An aspect I enjoy about our pop band line up is that not a single member of Budo had either French or German nationality. And in fact, not a single one of us share a mother tongue. I think it is a great example of how the lockdown has actually opened things up for people now that travel is not a limitation.
The hackathon itself was about unleashing the power of data to drive the energy transition, something Annette and I fully subscribe to. Our challenge;
“Develop a prototype for a joint infrastructure planning approach taking into account as much as possible all kind of charging stations (public, semi-public, companies, residential):
• State of the art (infrastructures and electric vehicles in the region).
• Development of a common cross-border charging infrastructure deployment tool via a cooperation between cross-border actors.”
On top of this we had to develop a business and pitch it. Scores were provided against four judging criteria: innovation, implementation, the quality of the presentation itself and the potential large-scale impact of the solution.
With the information to hand, we rallied ourselves and got busy completely wasting time on the wrong things. Thus in the spirit of sharing in this article I will attempt to save any readers from similar starting pain and talk a little through the hackathon journey and how I see that it can be structured into four distinct(ish) phases. It may save you from a process/ journey/ mental state that in my case looked a little like this:
Quick note, I focus here more on the business creation process rather than the tech side of things, although it will make the odd guest appearance.
As with all of our posts I would love to hear any feedback, different approaches and views, or just a bit of trolling to keep me grounded.
So, I would make these four phases as follows;
- Explore
- Feel the Pain
- Sanity Check
- Make it Pretty (or ‘Polish the Turd’)
Let’s dive in.
🧭 Explore:
As said on the tin, I think the first step is to really explore. Whereas some people in a team love this part for the lack of structure and opportunity to run freely with ideas, others find the lack of clarity difficult. It takes a bit of navigation (🤦♀️) to progress through this stage smoothly. I find it is helpful for everyone to keep talking, to generally keep things light and enjoyable and (for those that want to start delivering straight away) to be aware that big chunks of time will be spent getting to know one another and that this is essential for later.
Key here is to maintain an environment that allows everyone the chance to discuss ideas and explore options freely, so try not to be too pragmatic and actively encourage all contributions. There is a lot of new information coming in so I suggest to capture it in a format that you can keep coming back to later — believe me it helps. The learning does not stop at the end of this phase of course, it’s about forming a base which can be adjusted as new information comes in. Equally as there is no hard stop to getting information and generating ideas it is hard to judge when to move on, so there is a major risk there that you can get stuck in ‘explore’. This is where my personal nemesis self-discipline comes into play.
Some of our outputs:
- Technical research & problem research
Or in other words, swotted up on EV charging infrastructure
- Sourcing available data
Searched for publicly available data and how it could be used as well as data available from partners
- Market landscape map
Looked up companies in the space and segmented into groups
- Value chain
Critical, this needed to be well understood (and always does)
- Competitive research:
Had a look at what other startups were doing, especially if their offering had any overlap with the challenge prototype…
- Prototype
Agreement on steps needed and development of infrastructure (our base prototype was defined by the hackathon hence we were able to begin early on)
- Logo and branding
- Lots of talking, chatting, thinking through problems and sharing of ideas
🩹 Feel the Pain
The best advice I have received when it comes to developing a business idea is to focus on the problem. In this phase it’s about shifting from concept generation to really honing in on one idea, and these ideas should be driven by having great knowledge of the customers and their pain points. Shout out to my ex-boss and serial entrepreneur Jeffrey who just shared an excellent article with Annette and I on problems and picking out the best ones:
Another useful tool is the value proposition canvas, as below:
In this stage as you reach the top candidates for selection I would map these out on a business model canvas to add some shape to them, which will then help in making the agonising decision of which to cut and which to keep. Referring back to feeling the pain, as it actually is quite difficult to let some ideas go it is good to remember this applies to others too — especially if they were outvoted. In the past I have worked in teams in which a member struggled to regain motivation after their idea was killed. Spend time rallying everyone around the chosen idea. Once selected and it’s all systems go, motivation should flip back to an all time high.
More outputs:
- Customer profiles
Using the value chain as a base and with a focus on their problems
- Problem ranking
Based on the assumed problems, gave them a ‘juicy’ ranking
- Business model formation
Generated some concrete ideas with the teams (now pragmatic) input
[read: me getting put down frequently]
- Mapped to a business model canvas
Picked the top contenders and fleshed them out
- Crunch time
Reached consensus on the best idea with plenty of refining to be done
- Established some assumptions which we would try to verify through further research
🧠 Sanity Check
Maybe it’s the VC-in-training in me, but I quite enjoyed this part. I also cannot emphasise enough how much these sanity checks helped when answering questions on pitch day.
You have a business idea now, but you need to get out of the bubble and ask real people to see if anyone bites. Through this you will know if you are onto something or it may drive the idea in a completely different direction (hint: it probably will). We were able to ask a customer about what they felt was critical for their operations both now and later (and what they would pay for it), and I also took the chance to attend some online conferences and ask the speakers questions. Although it may feel like you are pestering people, there are many experts out there who enjoy talking about their fields — just go for it.
Another handy thing to do is to run the numbers and check some questions like; is the market big enough? How many customers for how much revenue? What would the market share be to earn x?
This should help with coming up with a revenue model — but as a sanity check only I would not go too deep, just confirm that you’re not talking complete nonsense, however tempting that may be.
Of course, keep checking in with the team as another way to see if you’re going way off par.
Yep, outputs:
- Market research V.2
Questions to a DSO covering pricing, their strategic priorities, ‘do you like our idea?!’, etc. Spoke to and asked questions to other parties at virtual conferences (benefits of lockdown once again)
- Costs analysis
With plenty of team input and educated guesses
- Rough revenue model
Tried to use market pricing comparisons and justify against costs
- Market size checks
Great for the later obligatory TAM bubble slide in the pitch
- Top down analysis of the market
Also putting the revenue model through its paces
- Fleshed out and ready-to-go business model
💄 Make it Pretty / “Polish the Turd”
I am not just talking about having an incredibly skilled UX designer to make everything gorgeous here, but it certainly helps. This is the final hurdle and everyone is scrubbing up.
In terms of what I was doing, this meant finalising the business model and making a pitch that really sold the idea, whilst preparing for questions on the less sexy parts of the business.
For me this is the most stressful part and team tensions can run high. It reminds me of the final minutes of showstoppers in Great British Bake Off, trying to save a melted decoration with something burning in the oven in the background. As well as pushing through on your bits (because you are probably behind schedule) it’s good to be sympathetic and supportive to the rest of the team as you reach the end of, in our case, a month long effort.
If motivation sinks to an all time low shift gear to let’s just get through this and keep in mind that once the final products are all delivered everyone will feel amazing again… right guys…?
The outputs here are fairly obvious, so I’ll throw in a Top Tip alongside;
- Pitch
The pitch should explain itself (visually) and you add flavour, think through how to make it flow in a self-explanatory way and try to get a nice personal touch in there. There are some slides that are classics in pitches and there is a reason for that, use them. (My personal favourite being the ‘we do it gooder’ slide, as quoted from one of the Partners at SET).
- Prototype
Come up with the best way to show it off, it doesn’t all need to be functioning, but go through exactly how it will be demonstrated. Our prototype was also available online and the judges could go and check themselves. This saved us due to technical issues in the video demonstration.
- Business model
The business model canvas is your friend, start early with it and keep iterating, it will save a load of effort later on. Also understand that value chain.
- Pitch(ing) & Demo(ing)
If like me you are terrified of public speaking then practice, practice, practice and focus on making the audience comfortable. By doing so you do an excellent job of completely distracting yourself from your own discomfort
(taken from the excellent podcast ‘How to Own the Room’).
So to summarise, explore widely then embrace the pain, followed by some checks of your sanity (needed by this point) and close with a final hurdle of polishing up.
We kept to this in the loosest sense possible, but in the end we managed to deliver a working webapp showing the best spots for future charge points according to different criteria as well as the functioning rudiments of a flexible, multi-stakeholder process (to apply for the land permissions and connections). On top of this we convinced the judges that our concept was great and business model solid and had a stunning logo and pitch deck.
Feels bizarre to look back at it now.
Thank you Team Budo 🍇 ️for being amazing, and thank you to the sponsors and organisers for a great event!
Ps. If you want to watch the pitch it’s available here — enjoy that every click makes me physically cringe: Budo_pitch on Vimeo
[Dragged out endlessly by Vicky, edited over the finish line by Annette. We work together to choose the best content and elevate each other’s work. More on us and our approach here]
