During fall 2015, I volunteered with the nonprofit 1girl. I got involved with 1girl out of interest to become more civically involved with a cause that I am very passionate about. Little did I know that that single experience would evolved into attending my first hackathon.
Give Back Hack is an annual weekend long event that strives to be the launch pad of social innovation. Prior to Give Back Hack, I had not attended a different hackathon or start-up weekend. I probably would not have attended Give Back Hack if not for the founder of 1girl reaching out to me to encourage me to attend.
Upon arriving on Friday I was captivated by the energy and enthusiasm to build something that will better society. After a few ice breakers, each participant had the opportunity to pitch a business idea and then all in attendance voted for this favorite ideas. After the top 14 ideas were solidified, each participant set out to join a team to build out their idea for the weekend. I decided to join Volundate: a dating app with a socially conscious focus.
The remainder of the weekend was spent developing a business model as well as the all important MVP, minimally viable product. For my team, we developed code for a beta version of our app. In addition, we put on an actual volunteering date. We connected with 4th Street Farms and invited some of our peers to come volunteer and mingle. After the date, we coordinated $1 off drafts at the local business North High Brewing. We had around 10 attendees and 100% said they would attend another Volundate event and 83.3% said they would pay $5 to attend a similar dating event.
At the end of the weekend, we presented a four minute pitch to a panel of esteemed social entrepreneurs. Out of some stroke of luck, we were awarded 2nd place and $3,000 of seed money for our idea. After winning second, I could hardly believe it! I loved this experience so much because it challenged me to apply my business knowledge from school on a physical potential product instead of a hypothetical business case. During Honors Cohort, our coordinator, Michael Brandl, says that venture capitalists typically fund great teams more than great ideas. I feel so fortunate because our team has both.
Our team is currently furthering our business plans and working towards applying to a few entrepreneurship accelerators. We our building out a social media platform, website, and scaling projections. Stay tuned more information to come in the future. Please see below for what some of the local news reporters had to say about Give Back Hack.
http://minervafinancialarts.com/givebackhack-2016/
Excerpt from Columbus CEO