I've racked up 3000+ miles riding up and down the hills in SF (530 vertical feet over 3.7 miles). 4 falls, 1 going too fast downhill and overcharging the battery (dislocated shoulder), 1 crossing tracks perpendicular slowly, and twice slipping on wet metal. Except for the first time I only managed to get banged up.
Take safety seriously and remember that things can go bad any time, so go slow (but not too slow) when it's riskier. Knowing how to foot break and fall safely are also musts.
I'm working on Retrace, "Graph-oriented communication" for sharing the ups and downs of experiences via a waveform interface. Reach out if you'd like to chat!
I do a lot of hackathons. My record is 4/26 for winning 1st, 16/26 for winning 1 or more prizes, mentored 3 times and judged once.
Do it on a weekend, have interesting sponsors with prizes, and make the judging/presentation criteria very clear from the start. Also attendance can be hard to estimate, not everyone will show up and not everyone will come back, plan accordingly.
Also, three pieces of advice I always give at hackathons:
1. work backwards from the presentation
2. only build what you show
3. only show the interesting parts
You seem to be being downvoted a bit, not sure if it's your ridiculously boasty first paragraph or your 3 bits of advice.
But if it is your 3 bits of advice, I'm actually going to say that for a certain type of hackathon, those bits of advice actually make perfect sense. So many hackathons are obsessed with judging and prizes, usually based off judges seeing very little in a brief presentation. If you really want to win, your strategy makes sense. While I haven't adapted it wholesale, I've certainly been in situations where I have prioritised technical work by what will play best in the presentation.
Personally tho, I find this a little sad and the atmosphere at these hackathons can be a little rubbish.
Plans like this sound cool, but I think it would be helpful to make a visualization so people could see how the payouts change for different exits, thresholds and % redistributed. Visualizations are an easy way to reduce uncertainty so people understand what they're buying into.
Shoutout for Ampersand.js which was mentioned in the article. The modularity is really nice for keeping things flexible so I can swap out parts as our app evolves.
I haven't had much luck finding the right cofounder despite meeting thousands of people over the past few years so clearly there's a problem. A few months ago I decided that the problem was probably me since I'm far from perfect so I've been spending considerable time on self improvement by working to define and embody our vision, mission and culture (while continuing to hammer away on product).
Is quality the right thing to focus on at this stage or should I just play the numbers game?
Hey Mat. We met a few months ago (through Weave). I thought you seemed like a decent guy. IIRC, the main problem I saw was that you seemed strongly committed to an idea that I didn't find very interesting. I meant to follow up with you, but more promising leads took priority and I never found the time. Just FYI.
Replicating research would boost your reliability score and the original's too which would boost credibility for future research.