Grant Proposal: Hackathon - Startathon

Community Grant Applications
#1

Grant ID: 8684urf3q

Summary:

Hackathon Structure:

Registration Phase → Building Phase → Online Judging → Offline Pitching and Judging

  1. The Registration Phase will include the interested participants to register themselves on Devfolio. During this they will be filling out a questionnaire on what they would like to build during the hackathon(i.e. about their idea). Also, at this point of time we will be dividing the builders for the hackathon into the two tracks.
  2. After Application Review Period, The Building Phase will start. This will be held in Online Mode where builders will be developing on their ideas. In between, we have talks and sessions by industry experts on Entrepreneurship over the period of one month, mentoring the students on efficiently building out ideas. It would help a lot if there can be a few workshop sessions(online) by Solana guys on building out on Solana.
  3. Online Judging: We have seen a great interest from students at IITM BS Program and RV College and we are confident to attract a huge audience for this. Thus, we will need to filter out the best of the ideas for the offline event. After submitting the projects which are built in the building phase, We will be choosing top 30 around for the online pitching event.
  4. Finale Round: The top 15-20 projects will be invited to showcase their products to judges in-person at RV College Bangalore. In return, they may get funding for their project to keep building it further and cash prizes from our sponsors.

We are primarily having two tracks:

  1. Web 3.0 Track. - Focused on projects build on blockchain.
    Classic Tech Track. - Focused on non-blockchain projects - Web2 solutions/ Non-software solutions and others.

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

Describe what your project does or is aiming to do in 50 characters or less:
Start-a-thon is a hackathon that is being organized under the Jamsetji Tata Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship under Nilgiri House, part of IITM BS Program. Students with exciting ideas for changing the world are encouraged to take part in it.

Start-a-thon will comprise of mentorship sessions from Wadhwani Foundation, followed by the ideation round and building phase to work on their ideas. In the end, the final round will be organized offline at RV College, Bangalore where the participants will be able to showcase their products to potential Angel Investors, which we are in talks of bringing them in.

If available, please enter a link to your project below:
This link is a Notion Document containing details about the hackathon. We will be hosting our page by the end of this week. Here: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

How far along are you?:
We are setting up our hackathon page and finalizing details on track prizes for participants. Also, we have booked the university auditoriums for 3rd week of August for hosting the hackathon in-person for the demo-case event.

Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you’re making?:
We wanted to have a comprehensive hackathon hosted. So this is a combined effort of students at IIT Madras BS Student Program students and Startup Ignition Cell-RV College Bangalore.

What’s new about what you’re making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn’t exist yet (or they don’t know about it)?:

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
To get more builders start building into web3 with exposure to various projects that are available. This is also spread more word about The Graph and value it provides for projects built on blockchain.

How will you measure success?:
We measure success through:

  1. The submissions and quality projects submitted to the hackathon.
  2. Engagement and ultimate usefulness people feel about the event being held by holding a survey.

What milestones will you achieve in the coming weeks/months, with or without the grant?:

  1. We will be going live in the upcoming weeks.
  2. We will be hosting online workshops and sessions for builders to help them build their products.

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Subgraph Developers, Other

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
1200

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:

  1. $500 To the best hack built using The Graph.
  2. $250 To the second best hack.
  3. $125, each to the third best hacks.
  4. $200, for help in hosting the offline event. This includes a demo day. We will need help for catering of food, help in accomodations and posters+banners.

Have you applied for (or already received) funding from somewhere else?:
Yes

If yes, please describe where you’ve received funding from and how much you have, or will, receive:
We will be taking help from Devfolio as they have Partner track prizes from Solana, Polygon, Filecoin and Replit.

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
Yes. I have been learning and working in Web3 since last two years. Last year, I interned with Solana Labs on building a wallet- Hydra Wallet, to be used primarily for distribution of funds among members of the wallet.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
I see the value in The Graph. The solution to indexing and everything is much needed which is provided by The Graph. It seems trivial in Web2 but the solutions of querying in Web3 are not much available and I find the value provided to be a great saver. Thus, I got the idea to spread the word about The Graph. Since, we were already thinking of hosting the hackathon, it could be beneficial if we could join the name of The Graph with it.

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Team

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Project (one-off)

Please select the category your project best fits into:
Education




Primary Community Poll

Do you fundamentally support this grant application, knowing that the final scope and grant amount may differ from the requested proposal?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters




Grant Committee Vote

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

#2

Will you be sponsoring the participants to come to Banglore from other cities? If yes, then how will you manage that financially? If not, there are high chances many projects might back out in the finals because they couldn’t afford the expense of traveling and accommodation. In this case, how will be managing it?

2 Likes
#3

Thanks for your question @Megabyte .

Will you be sponsoring the participants to come to Banglore from other cities?

Yes. We will be sponsoring the finalists to come to Bangalore and with their accommodation.

If yes, then how will you manage that financially?

That’s why the final $200 is reserved for this, in addition to the resources we have at our end.
We will be in touch with the finalists through our Discord channel for the hackathon and through emails. Since, Devfolio is our Platform Partner, we can easily keep track of the hackers who will RSVP for the final event and share their details for transferring the sponsorship money to attend the hackathon.

1 Like
#4

Will you be able to give an estimated value of all the resources you have for traveling and accommodation purposes?

1 Like
#5

For accomodation,

  • we are trying to coordinate with RV College to host the participants for two days(a day before arrival and the demo day). Thus, we might be able to save the money here.

For Travel expenses, for each participant Rs, 2000 INR would be more than sufficient, keeping in mind if people are coming from far away. However, now if I calculate, we might need more of this funding, as a team, will have maximum of 4 team members, so this funding should be more than what is asked but I am not sure if that will be appropriate to ask for this full help from The Graph.

1 Like
#6

Are you consider this hackathon to be across Banglore only? If yes, then the Budget is fine else you should check the budget once more with your team to bring participants from different cities.

@pdiomede and @Colson are the best people I know to look into this.

#7

Are you consider this hackathon to be across Banglore only? If yes, then the Budget is fine else you should check the budget once more with your team to bring participants from different cities.

Although the hackathon is open to all, we are expecting a huge number of participants from nearby Bangalore colleges, as our Startup Ignition Cell team has already started spreading the word at ground. We would definitely have participants from other parts of the country as well. But yes, pointed correctly, this might be under the funding.

Thanks for pinging people here.

PS: Once we are live on Devfolio, we are going to be full on spreading the word on Twitter as well.

#8

Keep us posted with the updates :raised_hands:

1 Like
#9

Hey. I received an email for presentation and I replied back with my preferred timings which are today. But I have not received any confirmation on this. Anyone can help?

#10

Have you received any date and time for your presentation?

#11

@doxe01.eth can help you here.

1 Like
#12

Since, at this stage, we have a team that deals with this kind of events, we will send you a new message, after some discussion within the DAO.

#13

Due to the complexities associated with large-scale sponsorships for conferences and hackathons, members of the Graph AdvocatesDAO have established a new team - The Events Team.

I will be closing this grant proposal as the newly formed team will assume responsibility for the review process of this proposal.

@anshuman Thank you for your proposal, a member of the events team will reach out to you soon.

#14

@doxe01.eth Thanks for this update. Can you please tell, how much time for the new team will take to reach out or maybe I can reach out to them.

It has been over a month and we are running out of time. Since, we are having a specific Web3 track for our hackathon, we thought TheGraph would be benefitted while the new-comers in Web3 will be able to explore a new tool as well.

Please do reply if it will be possible to achieve anything on talks of sponsorship this week or by mid of next week.

#15

I’ll tag the DAO member from the team and also message him in private messages. cc @Slimchance

1 Like