During summer 2016, AngelHack ran their 9th Global Hackathon Series, hitting 61 cities around the globe. The winning teams from each event received an invite to the pre-accelerator program, the HACKcelerator.
A pre-accelerator is focused on helping VERY early stage startups build an MVP (minimum viable product), but what sets theHACKcelerator program apart is that it’s the only program in the world that is focused on hackathon projects. Read more about some of the success stories so far.
.Learn about the teams below, and what they’ve learned once immersed in the Bay Area startup world.
Austin, Texas — Automatter.io automates emails, chats and telephones. Taking Gmail and Zendesk to the next level.
When you won your hackathon, did you have any idea of what to expect for the HACKcelerator?
When we won the hackathon, we somewhat had an idea what to expect. We were blown away by everyone coming together into one place. There were so many people that we broke everything — Slack, WebEx, Hangout. I was amazed at all the different people around the world connecting to build stuff. — Will Tran
Manipal, India — Flico predicts information like word meanings, landmarks, unknown songs, or any specific merchandise a user might be curious about whilst watching video content.
What are you most looking forward to at Global Demo Day?
Making connections with the next stage incubators and investors! — Anirudh Raghunath
Nairobi, Kenya — For a smarter and greener city, ReportTaka is a platform that send alerts of waste disposal in Nairobi.
When you won your hackathon, did you have any idea of what to expect for the HACKcelerator?
At first we thought that winning the hackathon guaranteed us a slot in Silicon Valley Week but we soon realized that we had a long way to go in order to make this happen. All the weekly deliverables helped us to build on the initial idea further and to develop it into a working startup.
We were able to get the mentorship we needed and the weekly deliverables kept us focused and on our toes. — Racheal Gathagu
Mumbai, India — #Pragma aims to keep the internet clean of child pornography.
What’s the most valuable thing you learned/discovered during the HACKcelerator?
Your dedication is just as important as your skills. — Omkar Patil
Ramallah, Palestine — BareedEE provides businesses with an easy to use platform to notify freelance couriers of a package to be delivered.
What’s the most valuable thing you learned/discovered during the HACKcelerator?
The 3 month HACKcelerator taught me how valuable it is to have deliverables at EVERY week in order to make sure the startup is moving forward at a steady pace and hold each member accountable for their deliverables. — Shaher Husein
Colombo, Sri Lanka — HypeHash is the world’s 1st #Hashtag-Centric Platform Marketplace for Trendy Designers & Buyers.
What, if you had your wish, would go down for your team at Global Demo Day?
Emerged as the winner and be the first ever to do that from an emerging country! — Ravihans Wetakepotha
Los Angeles, California — Safety route mapping application using machine learning, and big data technology. Meet Bypass.
So far, what do you think of SLV week — what has your experience been?
There’s been a lot thrown at us. We’re taking everything in stride and really trying to figure out how to best articulate our message. Having the ability to speak with so many people we weren’t exposed to before is so helpful. — Harry Dixon & Herminio Gracias
Cincinnati, Ohio — Wix for Alexa, Elev8 makes it easy to build and publish Alexa apps, by automating the technical details.
What are you most looking forward to at Global Demo Day?
The chance to pitch to the pros! — Ryan Echternacht
Sydney, Australia — Lustr is B2C platform that increases sales for emerging fashion designers by intelligently matching them to fashion conscious shoppers.
What makes you most nervous about Global Demo Day? What are you doing to get past that fear?
We’re nervous about getting our message across in 3 short minutes. Practice, practice, practice! — Angela Liang
Silicon Valley, California — Nomad is helping retailers integrate object recognition into their e-commerce solutions.
What’s been your favorite thing about Silicon Valley week?
The mentorship and feedback from the team has really helped the pitch. — Ethan Reid
San Francisco, California — Doctor D is a mobile app empowering gay men to stay on top of their sexual health.
Pretty much all of the other HACKcelerator teams flew into SF, but you guys are locals. What are some of the things you were looking forward to for Silicon Valley Week and Global Demo Day?
We’ve been working mostly apart for the past few months, so coming back together for Silicon Valley week has been very useful to work with the mentors and get pretty much 14 hours a day of pitch practice. — David Ernst
Toronto, Canada — TXT MD diagnoses viral diseases in developing countries over SMS.
We’ve got some big name judges lined up, some from the big accelerators (including YC, Techstars, and 500 Startups). What judge are you most looking forward to demoing in front of?
We were actually rejected initially by YC. Though they have a policy where if you were rejected BUT are able to impress a partner, the partner can invite you to an interview, so that’s what we’re after. What it really comes down to is getting the message across so we can focus on helping people. — Keeran Sivajisingam
Jaipur, India — Sloop is a powerful analytics insight tool for the physical e-commerce world.
What are you most looking forward to at Global Demo Day?
Raise funds, make connections, and network. We already have a few meetings set up for right before and right after the big day. So the main goal is to build useful connections. — Kunal Sachdeva