As we approach our fourth hackathon, my mind turns to our first back in 2018. We had no idea how to run a hackathon! Here's what we got right and wrong!

We were that 8 top teams took a punt on us @gnosisPM ( @MareenGlaeske), @KyberNetwork ( @ayobuenavista), @liquiditynet ( @HatforceSec), @MakerDAO ( @jessicarsalomon), @NuCypher ( @MacLaneWilkison), @santimentfeed ( @valentinmihov), @ThunderProtocol ( @0804chris ), @zilliqa ( @xinshudong)

1. We aimed at university students and researchers. This was such a smart move and one we were confident theory wise, but not sure in practice. Our original universities were just UK: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, KCL and LSE

2. We made it long (10 weeks+) -> this was great, it allowed time for students to learn. Problem, we didn't engage the students enough. We now have events every week to keep people engaged and interested

3. We make the mistake of making every partner give the same prize (3x £2k) - we now allow a range of prizes so that partners can make their challenges less/more difficult or exciting!

4. We did offline events! This wasn't so much a mistake, but in hindsight online is so much more efficient! We now reach students in 6 continents for each event!

5. We didn't focus on post-event support. We had teams that went on to raise, but more could have and gone onto great things! One team went onto @BoostVC, another was invested in by @500Startups

Now we have a dedicated investment committee and accelerators!

For anyone interested in that hackathon and reading more, here's the medium! https://medium.com/future-of-blockchain-competition/future-of-blockchain-finale-2019-a-summary-30427e0b16fc

@Maximilian_Ge, @Panoplos, @EliMLarson, @opheliaschai, @Odysseas_S, @ljfgudgeon, @aliblackwell, @mansoor_a_r, @larrytse, @chirale81