January 13, 2016
How 1517 Fund Uses Devpost to Engage and Support the Hacker Community
If you’re active in the hacker community, chances are you’ve already crossed paths with Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, General Partners at 1517 Fund. They are long-time hackathon veterans and support hackers through grant funding to kickstart projects, investments, and ongoing mentorship. My personal curiosity was piqued when comments like the one in the picture above started showing up on some of the Devpost team’s favorite projects. Luckily for me, Danielle and Michael were kind enough to chat a few weeks ago and share what they’ve been up to on Devpost and with the hacker community in general.
Desiree: Tell me a bit about 1517 Fund and your connection with the hacker community.
Danielle: Michael and I started attending hackathons frequently as part of our work with the Thiel Fellowship back in 2010. It’s been interesting to see how the hackathon trend has grown since then! We’re autonomous from the Thiel Fellowship now, but have a similar goal of helping people learn by doing.
With 1517, Michael and I go to an average of two hackathons per month and usually give out one to three $1K grants. We also try to help in other ways like holding office hours, mentoring, and connecting teams with angel investors or others in the community. We also make recommendations to the Thiel Fellowship. We’ve seen some great fellows come out of the hackathon community like Ari Weinstein and Conrad Kramer who started Workflow at Mhacks.
We’ve given out twenty grants since September to help people with their projects and work with teams on an ongoing basis. Each year we have the capacity to give out one hundred $1K grants.
Why do you focus on hackathons? What’s the value for you?
Danielle: Hackathons are great! We love to see what people are inspired to work on and it’s a great look into up and coming technologies. Hackathons are a place where lots of things are born like new projects and teams, however there isn’t a lot of infrastructure to help people to keep going on their work. That’s where we step in, since we see going to hackathons and giving out grants as an opportunity to get to know people, build relationships, and help projects move forward.
Hackathons are a big draw for us because we’re looking for people who want to make things, and that’s how hackers are choosing to spend their free time. There is a high level of commitment and passion - it’s hard to find that. When we see a team that is talented and has something interesting, we can start helping them immediately. For example, we just got off a call with someone who is building a hardware company making cell phones. We thought they’d really enjoy speaking with the Text2Map team from BostonHacks, who we gave a grant to, so we connected them to check out partnership opportunities.
Building relationships and helping hackers - that’s what we love to see! How are you using the Devpost platform to help with those goals?
Danielle: We’re only two people, so we can’t make it to every hackathon we would like. We regularly browse submissions to hackathons on Devpost and leave comments on projects that look interesting to us. It’s an easy way to start a conversation.
Michael: Devpost can be helpful even when we do attend a hackathon. Expos can be huge and we don’t always get the chance to meet everyone or get contact information from people we’re interested in talking to. We can find the team’s submission from the hackathon page on Devpost and contact them directly to start a conversation.
Is there anything specific you’re looking for in a hackathon project?
Danielle: We like to see things that are true hacks – building solutions and workarounds to problems that others face. The bigger the idea the better too. We especially love to see people using hackathon time to build something that they’ve been dreaming about, not just to win sponsor prizes.
Michael: Our evaluation of the people and team is just as important. That’s why we focus so much energy on getting to know people and building relationships with them when we visit.
How can interested hackers get in touch with you?
Michael: We love to hear from people! Hackers can tell us about themselves and see if we can help out by reaching out to us at info@1517fund.com. We love hearing from hackathon organizers too about partnering with their events. To learn more about us, check out our answer on Quora.
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You can find all of the teams 1517 Fund has given grants to that have Devpost submissions here:
BaymaxBuddies (which they just showcased at CES)
