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It sounds like the author is trying to tell companies what to do based upon his personal preference on why companies should run hackathons rather than based on

by ig1 13y ago

It sounds like the author is trying to tell companies what to do based upon his personal preference on why companies should run hackathons rather than based on any kind of evidence. I know plenty of developers and founders who picked up an API (Twilio, Stripe, Paypal and Azure come to mind) at a hackday and then ended up using it commercially elsewhere. These companies aren't stupid, they're often investing 6-7 figures in marketing spend in running hackathons. They look at ROI. It's fine if you prefer non-marketing focused hackdays, but that's totally different from saying they don't work.

kinlan 13y ago
It is based on a lot of experience running Hackathons. I chose not to elaborate much further on the reasoning in the article to keep it to the point. Ultimately the cost of running hackathons for the limited scale of developers that you reach at anyone time could be best spent in many many more ways. The Hackathon rarely wins the customer, and it is not sustainable as a practice often due to cost and ROI is near impossible to determine.
- maddddddddddddd 13y ago
  if you think ROI is near impossible to determine - you are doing it wrong.
- jlees 13y ago
  Personally, I'd be interested in some data and reasoning to further understand your point of view. Without elaborating, the points you make come across a bit terse and declarative, whereas this comment makes me think you actually have a deep understanding of the subject and good reasons for stating the points you made. As a standalone developer, I can think of several companies that I feel have built great "developer brand" and goodwill through hackathons, whether running their own, or sponsoring others (e.g. TC Disrupt, Startup Weekend). Twilio is the first one that comes to mind. But whether that translates into actual revenues is where my anecdotal evidence clearly falls short.
- ig1 13y ago
  Remember that in a lot of cases you're not comparing against the cost of online advertising, you're comparing against the cost of an external salesforce. Many businesses are perfectly happy to spend 10k to acquire a customer who'll pay them 50k over the next three years. Assuming you're not running hugely expensive hackathons a low conversion rate can still give a decent ROI. Even if you CAC is relatively low you can still make hackathon commercially viable. A lot of smaller vendors will partner together to split the cost of hackathons between them or will become external sponsors to third-party hackathons in order to reduce the costs involved.

by ig1 13y ago

kinlan 13y ago

It is based on a lot of experience running Hackathons. I chose not to elaborate much further on the reasoning in the article to keep it to the point. Ultimately the cost of running hackathons for the limited scale of developers that you reach at anyone time could be best spent in many many more ways. The Hackathon rarely wins the customer, and it is not sustainable as a practice often due to cost and ROI is near impossible to determine.

maddddddddddddd 13y ago
if you think ROI is near impossible to determine - you are doing it wrong.
jlees 13y ago
Personally, I'd be interested in some data and reasoning to further understand your point of view. Without elaborating, the points you make come across a bit terse and declarative, whereas this comment makes me think you actually have a deep understanding of the subject and good reasons for stating the points you made. As a standalone developer, I can think of several companies that I feel have built great "developer brand" and goodwill through hackathons, whether running their own, or sponsoring others (e.g. TC Disrupt, Startup Weekend). Twilio is the first one that comes to mind. But whether that translates into actual revenues is where my anecdotal evidence clearly falls short.
ig1 13y ago
Remember that in a lot of cases you're not comparing against the cost of online advertising, you're comparing against the cost of an external salesforce. Many businesses are perfectly happy to spend 10k to acquire a customer who'll pay them 50k over the next three years. Assuming you're not running hugely expensive hackathons a low conversion rate can still give a decent ROI. Even if you CAC is relatively low you can still make hackathon commercially viable. A lot of smaller vendors will partner together to split the cost of hackathons between them or will become external sponsors to third-party hackathons in order to reduce the costs involved.