It’s been more or less five years since hackathons truly hacked their way into the mainstream. Today, you can guarantee that on any given weekend, there is a group of hackers of all ages and backgrounds who are sitting behind screens and working on the next big thing. All while munching on some Frito Lay and downing some redbull. Sadly, only a handful of the thousands of “next big things” that are brought to life weekly ever make it out of these hackathons.
The majority of these innovative projects get lost in the sea of hacks, whether by choice or simply because the right people were not at the hackathon to recognize the project and its team’s potential.
*Queue dramatic music*
A few years ago, the world’s most global hacker community – AngelHack – walked in with a Knight in Shining Armor, also known as the HACKcelerator. The HACKcelerator was built to save aspiring hackers and their next-big-things, by providing AngelHack’s global hackathon winners with:
- 12 weeks of free, 24/7 access to a local co-working space
- At least one mentor who’s demonstrated extensive experience and amazing potential in his or her local community
- The opportunity to listen and talk to some of the biggest players in the Silicon Valley tech scene on a weekly basis. Some of of our awesome speakers this year include the Growth Hacking guru, Justin Wu, the mind-blowingly talented Stan Jones from Google, the infamous Startup Battlefield Editor from TechCrunch: Sam O’Keefe, as well as the incredible CTO of HP. And that’s not even half the list.
- A once in a lifetime opportunity to fly out to San Francisco, experience the world’s hottest tech hub, and blow away hundreds of investors and community leaders at the HACKcelerator’s grand finale: Global Demo Day
Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well for this year’s batch, things got a little cooler.
So, in the past, simply winning your local hackathon guaranteed you a spot in the program and a spot on the stage at Global Demo Day. But this year, we’re doing things a little differently. We have around 50 teams participating from the 50 cities you saw us in this summer. To make these teams’ journeys just a little more exciting, and to bring you the most – and ONLY the most – innovative products from around the world, our teams will be tested through a series of challenges that they must pass to truly prove themselves worthy of the stage at Global Demo Day. So be sure to follow their journey, support your local team, and vote for who YOU wanna see take the stage this year!
Interested in mentoring your local team? Tell us about yourself here!
