Proposal description
My name is Ragnar Sass and i want to create Dashathon - Xtreme Crypto hackathon - mixing together world class marketers and engineers to find creative ideas how to growth hack Dash to bigger audience. A- engineering as marketing B - developing real use cases for Dash
I am a serial startup founder and angel investor. Co-founder of Europe's best b2b startup Pipedrive, a simple CRM tool with 70 000+ paid companies. I am also the co-founder of Garage48 non-profit foundation and personally organized more than 70+ hackathons in 20+different countries. Biggest success is from 2015 november Minsk Garage48 hackathon, as the winner MSQRD was bought by Facebook just 3 months later for 100+ million USD.
What makes our hackathons very different from many others is that we are fully focused that teams will deliver a working prototype by the end of the event. No fucking powerpoint - only live demo. All events are organized by the core team with local key influencers, so we have strict rules and structure in place. That's why even Skype founders have participated in our hackathons.
So here is my idea. I want to bring together the best engineers & marketing folks from around the world for Dashathon - with the main goal to develop engineering as marketing ideas to working prototypes, what should boost Dash globally. With only heavily hand picked participants, the best rockstars.
We are not talking about ads in Facebook or Google or in any kind of other online or offline media. But developing unique solutions for marketing using engineers brains. Combining engineers, marketers, designers, machine learning gurus with team leads could lead into very surprising results. Every team will work indepentently & owns their solution indeed. In best scenario we will have several new crypto startups from this event.
Core principles:
* Dashathon - 48 hours, starts on Friday evening with pitching ideas and ends on Sunday with live prototype demos.
We will handpick every single participant. 100 participants.
* Individuals apply to take part - make a test assessment , give us reference about experience and then organizers will pick only the best ones.
*We will fly them over, cover their flight (max 650 usd), food & housing costs.
* Mentors. We will bring in 8 best marketing & cryptocurrency & financial mentors to support participants & teams. This should include a few people from Dash core team.
* We will build up a special hackathon venue in old factory building next to LIFT99.co startup community centre in Tallinn, Estonia.
* Main event would take place 4-6 May 2018. Every participant can present idea on Friday evening, participants choose the ideas they want to join, teams will be formed (15-20 teams) and real hacking starts.
*To make this event accessible globally we will hire professional video crew for Friday opening & Sunday final event online streaming. And making video clips through all event. It should feel like a reality show with professional quality.
*For extra motivation for best folks to attend we will have prize pool for 100 Dash. Winners will be decided together by Dash community & local jury Sunday evening.
* Extra motivation budget will be also for mentors, what will be divided after getting participants feedback. Something between 16.
END RESULT
At the end of hackathon we will have at least 15 different solutions how to promote DASH for BIG audience globally. Some of them will die, but usually half are pretty neat. And I am super sure that majority is great for asking more budget in future from Dash community. Most importantly - thanks to hackathon advertising & media we have delivered message to more 100 000+ folks worldwide that Dash is innovative crypto with strong community. And it could be first step building appmarket for Dash.
Here is first draft for budget, what will be more detailed for final proposal - taking account feedback & ideas from community. And yes - organizing high quality event with world class professional can't be cheap, but Estonia has best price & quality level. Calculation is made for 100 participants + 8 mentors.
Total budget: 290 899 USD / 447.54
Total without prices - 212 899 USD / 327.54 DASH
Prices for participants - 65 000 USD / 100 DASH
Prices for mentors - 13 000 USD / 20 DASH
P.S. budget is calculated 1 Dash = 650 USD. But as cryptomarket is still super volatile, then this is biggest risk.
------------
You may find discussion about pre-proposal in Dash forum here.
UPDATE: As people asked about API progress, then here is latest update about Dash API in forum.
UPDATE2: I contacted DASH core team about cooperation - response is positive: We were thinking about the similar event, however we need to be sure when fully functional DAPI is available. This should be clarified soon.
UPDATE3: KOT 5th Feb: THis week I should have a response from the team
I am a serial startup founder and angel investor. Co-founder of Europe's best b2b startup Pipedrive, a simple CRM tool with 70 000+ paid companies. I am also the co-founder of Garage48 non-profit foundation and personally organized more than 70+ hackathons in 20+different countries. Biggest success is from 2015 november Minsk Garage48 hackathon, as the winner MSQRD was bought by Facebook just 3 months later for 100+ million USD.
What makes our hackathons very different from many others is that we are fully focused that teams will deliver a working prototype by the end of the event. No fucking powerpoint - only live demo. All events are organized by the core team with local key influencers, so we have strict rules and structure in place. That's why even Skype founders have participated in our hackathons.
So here is my idea. I want to bring together the best engineers & marketing folks from around the world for Dashathon - with the main goal to develop engineering as marketing ideas to working prototypes, what should boost Dash globally. With only heavily hand picked participants, the best rockstars.
We are not talking about ads in Facebook or Google or in any kind of other online or offline media. But developing unique solutions for marketing using engineers brains. Combining engineers, marketers, designers, machine learning gurus with team leads could lead into very surprising results. Every team will work indepentently & owns their solution indeed. In best scenario we will have several new crypto startups from this event.
Core principles:
* Dashathon - 48 hours, starts on Friday evening with pitching ideas and ends on Sunday with live prototype demos.
We will handpick every single participant. 100 participants.
* Individuals apply to take part - make a test assessment , give us reference about experience and then organizers will pick only the best ones.
*We will fly them over, cover their flight (max 650 usd), food & housing costs.
* Mentors. We will bring in 8 best marketing & cryptocurrency & financial mentors to support participants & teams. This should include a few people from Dash core team.
* We will build up a special hackathon venue in old factory building next to LIFT99.co startup community centre in Tallinn, Estonia.
* Main event would take place 4-6 May 2018. Every participant can present idea on Friday evening, participants choose the ideas they want to join, teams will be formed (15-20 teams) and real hacking starts.
*To make this event accessible globally we will hire professional video crew for Friday opening & Sunday final event online streaming. And making video clips through all event. It should feel like a reality show with professional quality.
*For extra motivation for best folks to attend we will have prize pool for 100 Dash. Winners will be decided together by Dash community & local jury Sunday evening.
* Extra motivation budget will be also for mentors, what will be divided after getting participants feedback. Something between 16.
END RESULT
At the end of hackathon we will have at least 15 different solutions how to promote DASH for BIG audience globally. Some of them will die, but usually half are pretty neat. And I am super sure that majority is great for asking more budget in future from Dash community. Most importantly - thanks to hackathon advertising & media we have delivered message to more 100 000+ folks worldwide that Dash is innovative crypto with strong community. And it could be first step building appmarket for Dash.
Here is first draft for budget, what will be more detailed for final proposal - taking account feedback & ideas from community. And yes - organizing high quality event with world class professional can't be cheap, but Estonia has best price & quality level. Calculation is made for 100 participants + 8 mentors.
Total budget: 290 899 USD / 447.54
- Participants & mentors flights/hotels/visa/insurance - 110 000 USD / 169.24 DASH
- Catering/water/coffee/redbull + craft beers for Sunday evening - 17 639 USD / 27.14 DASH
- Venue rent / building a hack setup & stage / video streaming / video clips + live band for sunday evening - 31 000 USD / 47.70 DASH
- PR - Marketing & advertising activities - (mailing lists, FB, Linkedin etc ) - 12 000 USD / 18.46 DASH
- Hackathon team payroll + project management + format fee - 39 000 USD / 60 DASH
- Voting fee - 3250 USD - 5 Dash
Total without prices - 212 899 USD / 327.54 DASH
Prices for participants - 65 000 USD / 100 DASH
Prices for mentors - 13 000 USD / 20 DASH
P.S. budget is calculated 1 Dash = 650 USD. But as cryptomarket is still super volatile, then this is biggest risk.
------------
You may find discussion about pre-proposal in Dash forum here.
UPDATE: As people asked about API progress, then here is latest update about Dash API in forum.
UPDATE2: I contacted DASH core team about cooperation - response is positive: We were thinking about the similar event, however we need to be sure when fully functional DAPI is available. This should be clarified soon.
UPDATE3: KOT 5th Feb: THis week I should have a response from the team
Show full description ...
Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
Submit comment
Voting NO.
Budget huge!
I kind of get the marketing thing, but why should Dash re-invent the wheel on marketing. I do think we need great truly enthusiastic spokespersons in various languages, doing simply videos and blogs.
Dash marketing budget voting with community is amazing stuff. I have learned a lot from this already - wicked stuff.
Please try to extend the benefit of the doubt, and just consider their comment at face value, as a statement that they find the lack of escrow on a proposal to be a very strong negative factor.
It's a potentially lossy proposal. All the projects could be complete trash and it would be mostly a waste of funds, but if even one or two of them are something worthwhile, then IMO it could be very much worth it. That's the value of this proposal, IMO, more than marketing or getting the Dash name out there, it could lead to something of far greater value to the network as a whole.
Now, I do agree with the sentiment echoed by others. This kind of event would be of much greater value and have a much greater likelihood of yielding a ROI after Evolution drops, and would much prefer this proposal to come at that point, but like I said, it will just depend for me on how the budget looks later in the voting period. Abstain for now.
And my idea is not doing another random hackathon. It is doing SPECIAL EVENT ONLY FOR DASH. This makes it super different. And sadly also more expensive.
My background is much different indeed. I am expert in startups, where success is measured by real revenue & profit. And in startup world you very rarely delay things. SPEED matters the most. Successful startups are growing every week. Once more - every week.
But this experiment has been super interesting for me. I learned a lot about Dash community & and this voting system here.
However I am not happy with the budget being as high as that. 200 Dash should be sufficient for this.. Voting No for this because of the high ask but will support this if re-posted with a smaller budget.
Sadly i have only 24 hours per day. And i have so many startups & people fighting for my time, so i just have to make very thought choices, where i am involved & where not. But as i said, my team will analyze all feedback and will decide next steps.
And IMHO to get visas to estonia for people from asia is next to impossible
That is the very reason we recently did the thai internship thing...
We are being very redundant if we now fund this too.
Considering we have not seen the fruits of the thai internship program
Actual number shows that is not true, i have personally helped to get people visa to Estonia. Garage48 has being doing cooperation with government 7+ years and we have builded very good relation with ministry of foreign affairs.
Estonian government is very startup friendly and launched year ago this programm : http://startupestonia.ee/visa . As this has been successful then Estonian is more open for very talented people to visit us form whatever place in the world. We have also growing number of international students from outside EU, specially in IT.
After Evo I would be open to revisiting this at a better price.
Here are numbers - Beer 464 USD, band 4000 USD. Band + beer is 1.5% from budget. No breweski from Thailand, local craft made by Ex-skype dude.
Airfare is 650 USD per participant (15 local, 85 global).
And how is airfare connected with party?
Every hackathon what has organized with professionals will have a impact. As there are so many of them around, it getting more & more difficult to get very talented professionals to attend in any of them.
Estonia is also very very crypto friendly nation , this guy is a real deal , real entrepreneur, hes not a show biz start like Ben swann , but we dont more show biz stars now dont we ....
I personally think this is absolutely worth trying this to get over the curse of One Trick Pony nature of dash....
thank you for your proposal.
At first I found it expensive, but then checked your credentials. I used pipedrive a couple of times in different occasions and liked it alot!
(For the other factcheckers out there you can check it here: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pipedrive and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipedrive)
Also I like your drive to help young entrepreneurs.
Voting Yes.
Best Regards and Good Luck from Germany
AnCapitol
@All:
Estonia is one of the most cryptofriendly countries in the world. Just think about the blockchain powered e-citizenship there. There is no better place to hold it in Europe.
(On a side note, I want to see more Europe based initiatives.)
We had enough marketing proposals last round (I like Ben Swann, too), I think it's time to invest in the future and get back to businesses.
And - as true - Estonia is most blockchained country in the world. If we get green light from Dash community, i will involve Estonian e-residency to this event aswell. As they are working with their own token idea.
Walter
1) will this be available anywhere beside vz?
2) how come the salaries & office equipment budgets are high?
3) could you elaborate avg salary for call center staff in vz.
3) a friend of mine had a call center in DR and Orlando, FL 30 people.
It cost a fraction of what you are asking for.
4) internet costs are already high as per eugenias proposals.. in vz.
5) would it not be more advantageous for jurisdiction to be chosen by lower cost for services.. such as internet, labour etc? Such as Dominican republic or even Orlando FL
Biggest costs are:
Flights + housing = 110 000 USD - 37%
Prices - teams & mentors = 78 000 USD - 26%
But it will make huge difference for a result.
Thanks.
I would propose reviewing the budget , reconsidering the location, and reposting in a couple months when the DAPI is live and developers have a lot more to work with.
Voting NO.
I have been involved events organizing in other EU countries. After looking old cost reports i don't believe that changing event location would make any meaningful impact to budget. Yes - flights could be cheaper but everything else will be more costly. Thanks.
Copying here Kot message from yesterday: What is available today is Testnet Insight API available here: http://testnet-insight.dashevo.org/ . The documentation is available here: https://github.com/dashevo/insight-api-dash#instantsend-transactions . This is already widely used by out partners
Unless you're building a service that implements InstantSend payments, that's all you're going to get out of the Testnet Insight API.
Today is 1. February. I prosed event dates for 4-6 May, what is 3 months away.
Indeed - this is all very great discussion between my team crazy ideas & Dash Community. I have experience launching fully working mvp in 2 months with 2 engineers. Or relaunching niche social network with 5 developers in 3 months. Speed matters most in traditional startup environment. Exciting to see feedback )
I am sure that this idea & discussion will help to get DAPI out sooner, not later.
Are you an active member in the community?? As in dash community?
No, i didn't calculated price as per the moving average, as market is changing lately super fast. Its almost impossible to predict price changes.
down: 1. Will panic. 2. Buy more Dash.
Regarding budget: Decrease number of participants or ask from a community second payment. if price go down more then 70% i will ask down vote this idea.