Hackathon or bust!!

Well I'm hooked. I went to my first hackathon and loved it.  For those who are not aware of what they are exactly, then let me explain.  Basically people turn up to a venue with a view of making an app/website/something digital.  They don't know the theme of the event or necessarily anyone else but everybody just gets stuck in.  Myself and two friends went along to Social Innovation Bootcamp 2013 and found out the theme of the day was 'Lacks and Wastes'.  After batting lots of ideas around the room,  there were hundreds of things which were lacking or being wasted in the world, on the board for all to see.  After lots of ideas were scrapped or not fully developed, owners and their ideas had to pitch for an opportunity for their idea to be developed further.  In the end, there were 6 business ideas which were allowed to stand in the competition, which would be judged the next day, of which ours was one.  We were so excited.  We had 4 other people who were interested in helping us develop our idea and we spend the rest of the day and the following day refining our product.  Our time was interspersed with presentations and workshops helping us get our ideas off the ground, these included information about business models, prototyping and market research.  We learnt so much and spent a lot of time fine tuning our ideas ready for the final presentation on the second day at 4pm.  In front of a panel of judges the 5 teams who made it through to the end pitched their business ideas hoping to win the competition.  The judges were professionals who had developed their own businesses and had lots of advice to be given.  Check out the video made of the day.  I can't believe that out of 5 amazing ideas, ours came runner up.  What an amazing feat.   We have been encouraged to continue our business idea and take it further, the judges thought it inspiring.  So what the next step? Well need to make sure our pitch is water tight and we've crossed every t and dotted every i.  There are plenty of start up events/hackathons out there with investment in the business as the prize.  This time the prize was a fast track application to the Imperial Create Lab's Venture Catalyst Challenge 2014. So we just have to keep on trying, and we will make it.