🍒 After the Hackathon - Build in Public | Deca | ETHWarsaw [4]

So yeah, one of the things I I would argue is that you should not um use the hackathon as a way to start a new project, but rather to to meet people and learn. So um okay, so the beginning, as I said, is exactly one year ago right here. So I did this project and it wasn't just me. It was it was three of us. So uh I guess the first question is team uh I'm pretty convinced that the right like the right people is much more important than than the right idea because that comes first having the right people and then you can sort of uh play around and remix.

So the question is okay you're at a hackathon what is the right team? So, is this is this right? Backend, front end, and smart contracts. Um, like it turns out, especially if you're doing hackathons where with with sponsor bounties, a lot of the sponsors, they will have written their own smart contracts and you interact with them through uh sort of backend uh SDK APIs or something like that. So smart contracts is not as common as I thought in the beginning.

Um so uh maybe it's uh you know full stack back and you do BDN design. Um again like I um if you if you have a really competent front- end engineer they will know full stack because they need to know how to integrate it. They need to know how to build the front end without breaking the back end. that's not a given. A lot of people make like really beautiful websites, but then it's hard to to like integrate it with the back end and vice versa.

Um and of course like knowing how to present, knowing how to design and like market your product is important but uh in in my view at least in the context of a hackathon the most important thing is like everyone needs to do like needs to have as much as a full stack understanding as possible and if you don't that's totally okay. That's that's the point of the hackathon is to learn that in my view is to grow and to meet people. So I I probably should have asked at the beginning. Um do you guys have an like do you guys know what what it means building in public or maybe it's not a completely strict definition. uh like building in public is the process of using um uh like revealing everything about how you're iterating and building in order to get fast feedback and be able to build something that people actually need.

You know, one of the common startup mistakes is that people say, "Oh, we have the best idea. we're gonna like just sit in a room for a year, build it, then you go out to the public, you give out this product, and oh, there's no product market fit. Nobody wants it. Nobody needs it. And you thought that you knew what people wanted, but you don't.

And you like it's it's almost impossible that you can guess that. It takes a lot of fine-tuning. So when I say build in public, it means that I I literally will post videos on X that show, oh this is my latest feature. I've been build how I've been building it like literally behind the scenes and some people enjoy watching that. So um that's the okay so this is this was like okay uh during the hackathon after the hackathon uh okay maybe one of your teammates they're already a founder of another company or maybe they're a contractor they like people are busy even if say that you hit like the great idea you win a lot of prizes you want to keep going people are not like it to to do this seriously means like you focus on it and you spend a lot of time on it and a lot of people think, oh, if it starts going well, if I get the grant, then I will start doing this full-time or like spend a lot of time on it.

But it's the other way around. In order to like get to that point, you need to spend time. So, um, sometimes it's hard to keep it going. And that brings me some suggestions about this first part. Yeah, this is just like a summary and this is just my perspective like take it or not.

Um, I think right now you should be worried about meeting the right people for down the line. So I I was talking for example about last year's E4O and uh you know my teammates I'm I'm great friends with uh um one of them I I see him all the time. The other one I I don't see them as much as a different city but like a lot of the people I I meet at conferences and hackathons become extremely important. Two years ago within my team uh I randomly happened with uh uh one of the guys who ended up being one of the founders of in Argentina. So like and bringing defcon to Argentina this year.

So you never know who you're going to meet. You never know what paths they'll take. So I think that's that's number one value of coming to these things. Uh and also don't worry about product market fit. You're trying to like implement hard technology and when you're uh implementing sponsor technology a lot of time you're dog fooding new features so they won't will will not be completely ready they will be hard to implement.

You're working on your technical skills. And third uh learning full stack web development again this is my view that the best CEO is also a decent CTO. So regardless of whether you think you're going to be the technical person or not in the long game, it's really really useful to have these basic understanding. Okay, moving on. So um as I said my teammates, we all had stuff to do.

It's not like we were just like waiting around for something to do. So we even though uh various sponsors told us you should keep building this. It's very valuable. Keep going. We were like, "Okay, let's put it in the drawer.

It's interesting. Maybe sometime later we'll do it." Um, so, uh, just a little over a month later, I went to Thailand. So, this was one of the pop-up villages that were, uh, before Defcon last year. And that too was that too can be can fit into the definition of building in public because when I arrived there I realized like oh my god I'm literally surrounded by my target audience like this is the be like the perfect place to build it out see if it if there's there's actually demand for it if people need this.

If people actually like it. Um, I'm specifically not going into detail about what Cherrybuilders is because that's not the point of this talk. Maybe I'll mention it briefly at the end. Um, but regardless like depending on what your product does, what your service does, find the people who are your target audience, whether it's online or in person, you know, maybe maybe you can't uh spend a month in Thailand. Uh so um but actually if you're open to that you should know that these kind of things offer scholarships and sponsorships and all sorts of things.

I I actually did not pay for my accommodation for this for one month in Thailand. Um and being being there gave me the chance to start building it and testing and iterating. I was in a very fast loop. My two teammates were not there in Thailand but I I said look I'm I'm in this great situation. you want to help me?

So they actually helped me build the features based on the feedback that I was getting in Thailand. So I was there doing sort of business development, talking to people all the time, presenting on stage and and so on and also building a little bit and at the same time my two teammates were building. But this was not um they they didn't have time they so one of them was solo founder of another project and the other was an employee of a company. So they decided like not to take it forward and so moving forward it was just me. Um so after this one month of iteration I feel like I felt like oh I reached I understand the right user experience that people will use.

So up until this point the only people who used charitable builders were people who I asked to use it. I was like try try this out. This is my app. Can you tell me what you think? Nobody used it without me asking them.

I I think that's a good definition of product market fit. You know, people using your thing without you asking them to. Um but I felt like I reached the right user experience so that people would actually use it. Um so imagine in this first period I just test like trial until I found that um and I I had a lot of uh opportunities just from going out of my comfort zone. And by the way I knew zero people when I went to this.

I just sort of went out of my comfort zone and like one of the presentation like this is just a funny anecdote. is like uh oh do you want to come present at the demo today there there will be Vitalik and it's like okay uh the these are opportunities to get in front of of important people and then actually this is there in Thailand there was a presentation about Cimento and that's what leads me to the to the third chapter which is a few months later in Argentina at the event that this is uh Juan Bennett from Protocol Labs uh he was uh um talking about. So again, a few suggestions from this part. So find your target audience and that doesn't have to be in person. It can be online and building public.

So if you if you see on the Twitter page of both Charotbuilders and of myself, there's a lot of like constant posts of like this is the new feature I've been building. This is the like here's how I've built it. uh and so on. Uh and then leverage momentum when you have it. You know, I arrived at this Thailand event not thinking I'm going there to build out this product.

I got there and it was like, oh, here is the perfect place to do this. Let's scale up and like focus on this. I let's pivot my my plan of what I'm going to do here. And third, um, yeah, when the first wave, okay, so this is a bit, but I think it's very important that when the first wave hits, like you you you're not going to be positioned for it. But that doesn't mean like it's impossible to have the vision first completely clear and then start.

You start and while you're on the way, that's that's when the vision becomes clearer and clearer. You need to take a step forward. So um you won't be ready but it will make you ready for the next wave. So the next wave was Buenocidis in March. This was the the March papa village of Buenosiris.

Again I want to make it very clear you don't have to be a nomad then go around the world for for the buildin public approach. It's just about finding your audience and and not worrying about oh are they going to steal my idea? No. talk to everyone like literally you want to get the feedback and you want to iterate and you want to build have a loop where you're like constantly changing based on what people tell you. So uh I arrived here and I knew or at least I was convinced that I had the right UX.

So the first the first one in Thailand was about figuring out the UX. Now here it was time to to put it into action. So this was in my view the first time that Cherry had product market fit. So um I'll I'll give you like just the basic maybe some of you know that Cherry.builders is matchmaking to find teammates for hackathons.

So it's you you can find your teammates using it. It's a bit like a dating app but for for collaborators. Uh, and this was the first time for the hackathon in March in Buenocidis where people used it and it was useful to them. And I like we set it up, we advertised it and then a lot of people used it without me saying like, "Oh, can you use it to test please?" I didn't do that and it it was actually useful to people.

So um I mean obviously that's not the end but like this is like getting to that stage and notice that there I haven't talked about grants I haven't talked about um you know uh incorporating a company like all of this comes before you know like grinding on it like honing in on what is the right user experience for your for your users that all comes way before you think about creating a limited company. Um so um first advice looking around there will be synergies you can leverage. So I'm I'm with Urb that's the you know the Urb camp was next door basically Urb's community in Rome were the organizers of ETH Rome and many other things including this boot camp next door. Um, so when I when I got to Cimeto, what I did was I I got into the the startup accelerator with Cherry, but I knew that I wasn't going to ask for uh for funding because that that wasn't the right time for me. And so I I leveraged Cherry for Urb and then I leveraged UR for Cherry.

So about keeping your eyes open for those synergies and using them and also following the path of least resistance. Yeah, as I was saying like literally I this I was in Thailand and I was discovering about Argentina and it made sense. So I decided to go there and at each of these steps it was like going out of my comfort zone, going to these things where I knew no one turned out to be a massive advantage. uh and starting before you're ready. Like there's no way like there's no way that you you're going to have the clear picture at the get- go.

Um all right. So that that's all I had to say, but I'm actually uh happy to to stay and talk and answer any questions you guys have cuz um obviously this was a small part after after this journey. I like in the last few months I actually incorporated it and I have partnered with many hackathons including you. So if you're looking for people to hack with uh this weekend you can use cherry.builders.

Um and yeah I'm going to open it up for questions if you guys have any. Thank you. Any questions?

Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait.

Thanks for um your experience just sharing of your experience. But I want to know that uh if it's very hard for me to get uh to get him made then uh which means that because I am a digital nomad now and I um and it's hard to find a base so it's hard to to to meet people in in person or or build or build an in person together. So, I want to know that uh if all of my teammates are are AI, then how to uh how to how to find the the the right AI agent as my teammate?

Okay.

Okay. Um I mean I the way I use AI is um to coordinate the AI. Um if you want like as far as I know the most autonomous thing in coding that is uh cloud code if you're prepared to spend the because it doesn't come cheap. You if you're using it all day every day you might end up spending two or $300 per month. Huh?

Really? Oh, so okay. The answer is move to Poland. Okay.

Okay. Well, anyway, in answer to your question, um, yeah, I mean, it it really really helps supercharge your development to use these tools effectively, staying on top of the trends. I mostly just use cursor and and that has allowed me to pretty much 10x the speed at which I do things. In some cases, even more. Um, I'm like I think the way that you're looking at it is instead of having teammates, I'm going to team up with AI agents.

But with AI agents, you're not teaming up with them. You're you're orchestrating them. You're you're overseeing everything and telling them what to do. So, it's that paradigm. maybe harder than to fight a teammate.

I mean, you don't have to train your AI agents. You you just need to use one of the existing products.

Existing product.

So again, within cursor, you you have uh for instance uh clothes for you, you use that you you ask it to implement your tasks. You can run multiple in parallel. If you're using cloud code, that's a CLI tool. So in your terminal again you're saying do this task for me and you can specify which model to use.

Okay I got the cursor I I already marked it. Okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot for your answer. Okay then.

Thanks. You're going to close.