I’m Armin, part of the team behind the 24 Hour Startup Challenge!
Over this weekend, there are over 300 founders building products live on Twitch in 24 hours. As I post this, there are almost 90 people live streaming their work from all over the world! You can watch them on 24hrstartup.com.
The idea behind this live-streamed hackathon event comes from Pat Walls. He challenged himself to do a 24-hour startup twice this year and live-streamed his process. He is currently moderating and interviewing people from the maker community in our main stream.
Initially, we planned for about 50 participants but were overwhelmed with sign-ups. People are motivated to do this, and you can see that in their streams! We think it’s great to watch everyone make their crazy ideas reality, so we wanted to share :)
A few products being built right now:
* Heartbeat Canvas - Generate art from your heartbeat
* Privacy First Products - A curated list where you can discuss privacy first products
* EpilepsyBlocker - Disable GIFs that may cause epilepsy
Let us know what you think!
Armin (& Melanie & Pat)
People could pay to play and gain a shot at the prizes.
Hey... that sounds like a startup. Maybe there is one startup in your event. ;)
I tried this (https://www.twitch.tv/louisswiss) last week and failed. The weekend just isn't good for b2b sales. With no extra work I did reach 4 sales ($600) within a week though.
It's quite a challenge to keep focused all the time, but it's super fun to test out what you can do in one day. The code will reflect the fast coding of course, but I'm surprised on the progress of maybe streamers!
I'll bookmark it for later anyway
One interesting trend are features built on top of remote team management tools such as slack, airtable, gitlab, etc. I use G Suite everyday. And would definitely look to build on that platform with their huge user base ;)
Cool! will I be expected to sign-up with my FB/Google/Whatever social media account to join?
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It would be useful to be able to sort through the streams by the stack they're using, whether it be nocode, React, Django etc.
“Tens of developers building web apps on Twitch right now”
Not that I want to dismiss the efforts - a group of people all challenging themselves to build out a side project in 24 hours is commendable. But building an idea into an MVP on a Saturday is not the same thing as launching a company.
Props to these people doing what they're doing publically.
If someone starts something, I call it startup.
I decided to build something for nonprofits:
I found a number of charities that directly equate an action (do x things for y people) with a dollar amount. I pulled together a list of the charitable actions and chose a base product that people were familiar with (the cost of a pumpkin spice latte). Then I sorted them by how many lattes you would have to skip to be able to donate to compelete the charitable action.
It was a lot of fun and I hope to do something similar again.
-Rest API is deployed on Heroku for free -Db is on mlab for free -React app is deployed on Netlify for free -Gatsby site is deployed on Netlify for free -Design made with Adobe XD for free -Illustrations from Undraw.co for free
Please slow down on my app hahaha, you know how Heroku crashes easily...
BEAF - Share your Before/After pictures and get unbiased feedback from the people you love.
For a couple of tips as someone who uses Heroku, mlab (mongolab), etc:
- Something like https://cloudinary.com/ can automatically compress those images. Will speed up the load and make the project shine even more, since it is loading now a 1390px image in a 320px space.
- A redirect from the netlify.com to the main domain would also be a good idea.
1: Apply for job
2: Get assigned 24 hour startup project
3: Create startup
4: Get funding...
Like Alphabet but on a smaller scale.
Could be pretty great setup for a startup.
Not surprisingly most thumbnails look like..... VSCode :)
I'd say 99% of my viewers always ask "Oh! Ubuntu!" and we chat about Linux or open-source till they leave.
So yes, code streaming is heavily macOS and Windows (for good reason). Streaming software, specifically OBS, is way behind on Linux and is missing a key feature (VSTs) and has been for a year+, along with lots of other streaming software shrugging when asked for Linux support.
Story of Linux, I guess, hah.
Then I realized he was localizing files, seems odd for 24h challenge.
The idea is to make a TV online but with content from indie film-makers, free movies (public content) etc without making the user pay!
Feel free to follow along on Twitter under the hashtagg #24HRstartup
And here it is: https://feedby.io/
I don't think the goal is exposure for anything that's created, it's more of a live streaming hackathon. If creating a web app is a startup then I've founded more startups than I can even keep track of. The title is somewhat of a misnomer. Check out this comment from one of the team members who organized it.
Please folks - we need new terminology.
This initiative is all fine and good, but maybe we need new words, because these are not startups.
This seems more to fit the term 'Hackathon' than anything.
'Microstartup'?
'Microproject' ?
'Microfab' ?
'Micro-op' ?
Ok maybe not so great ...
Something that communicates that it is authentic and innovative, but at the same time, that it's a small, maybe individual, project oriented effort.
Someone on HN has the power to make these memes stick :)
I agree 100% with OP, the term startup has been totally devalued by this trend towards ‘everything is a startup’, when a lot of things (such as some of these projects) would be better described, and I think receive better recognition, if they were considered cool projects or units of work.
Some of them may morph into businesses but it is disingenuous to try and call everything a startup.
I see it as part of a deeper trend where fake-it till you make it/style over substance world where ‘everyone is an entrepreneur’.
I get that some degree of faking it is necessary, maybe the product doesn’t exist, maybe elements of it are done by hand rather than automated, and clearly some degree of this is necessary. But too much of it as an ethos devalues the entire ‘innovation culture’
My 2 c
A startup is a company that's focused on something innovative and effectively high growth - something a VC could invest in.
Nobody is referring to the new Taco restaurant down the street as a 'startup' even though their revenues will be more than $1 M this year.
VC only makes sense in high growth businesses with large markets. Otherwise they are just businesses.
And 'an afternoon of coding' isn't really even that either - it takes more effort just to do the proper incorporation.
So these words I think have meaning.
'Project' as the commenter described is apt ... but I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of 'word' emerged that caught all the hype and was overused.
*People. Women participated too. ;)
If you look at the above graph on startup financing cycle, it starts before there is any investment -- with cofounders and an idea.
The terminology and process beyond that point comes from MBAs and money men. A VC will probably invest in any company that will satisfy whatever objective they have for investing. This is a 24 hour project sprint by a founder. If it gets the right eyeballs, the idea is well on its way to becoming a startup.
The hashtag #24hourstartup is good branding that conveys that.
You're one of the few who "gets it".
I don't think anyone who participated actually believes they made a startup. Startup just implies something greater than project and start-to-monetization.
It's absolutely a misnomer and even Pieter who largely popularized the "Startup in <time>" idea even admits it, it's all a marketing ploy for laypeople to get it instantly.
