Working with Sponsors

Happy sponsors, happy hackers, happy hackathon!

What we did

For our hackathon, we planned on three main ways of acquiring sponsors: direct outreach, email outreach, and an application for an MLH. Of these, direct outreach was the most effective. Our team was very successful at getting companies to sponsor the hackathon. Unfortunately, MLH did not give us funding, but we still recommend applying there. Email outreach largely failed.

Email Outreach

For email outreach, we hired freelancers from Fiverr to make us spreadsheets of possible contacts, with name, email, title, etc. This was surprisingly cheap; we paid 10 cents a pop. However, the lists were poor quality, and many of the emails did not work. We sent ~100 emails, and got one reply, but it did not amount to anything. This might be due to the fact that many of the emails were associated with the wrong company names (by either our mistake or the freelancers'), so they were sent with the wrong names.

Direct Outreach

As our experience shows, relationships matter! Here are two examples of how being proactive in establishing new connections resulted in valuable relationships.

• Fivetran

This story is about random conversation during another hackathon with a long-term follow-up. Back in October 2019 three of us participated in the CalHacks. In the middle of the night, Nikita and Artem had a great incentive to visit a Fivetran workshop: the first 50 attendees on every workshop got the free blanket! (The nights in Berkley were little bit freezing that time). Armed with the desire to get the SWAG, we took our laptops and headed up to the workshops lab. For some reason, we decided to stay a bit longer after the workshop finished, so we had an opportunity to chat with the instructor. He was a Fivetran CTO from Estonia, who quickly realized that we are native Russian speakers and asked us for a little language practice! Amazing how such a random aspect can serve as a bridge in communication, isn't it? We finished up with sharing our LinkedIn profiles to stay in touch in the future. The next day Nikita was working on the algorithm for the hackathon project and was looking around for the help from the mentors. And - what a surprise - found the Fivetran CTO! After helping with the issue, apparently, he was very interested in our project and visited our table during the project pitching. The rest happened right away!

- "Hey, we are actually organizing our own hackathon that will happen in early April. Would you be interested in sponsoring us?"

- "Yeah, sure! Let's stay in touch!"

Several months later Artem met him on one of the Bay Area meetups to follow up on the sponsorship. It didn't work out, because the company change its hiring goals. But as a result, we obtained a strong connection in our network, which you can check up while organizing the hackathon this year. Perhaps they changed the hiring goals again?!

• Black Box VR Gym

This story is about being creative while being proactive!

By mid-February, we have already been clear on our Utopia and Dystopia theme and have been looking for sponsors. Meanwhile, Nikita and Atahan were visiting the Black Box VR Gym, so we thought: why not to ask them for sponsorship? Prepared after learning #strategize and #negotiate (lol), Nikita went to talk to the gym manager and... he was very interested in this idea! Our negotiation continued, but as the Black Box is only a startup, they didn't have any large hiring goals for 2020. But we have established the bridge - so feel free to use it while organizing your hackathon! Did you know that Black Box has the one month free? Use it wisely! And be creative in reaching out to partners - in the beginning, we couldn't even think that we will try to reach out to the gym!

Did you notice what these two stories have in common? Following up on the conversations, being proactive and brave in reaching out - yeah, that sounds pretty much like #responsibility! So don't be afraid to talk to people, be responsible in maintaining the relationships, and you will definitely succeed!

Collaborating with MLH

Ideally before you begin the hackathon preparation or when you have already started, we strongly recommend applying to be Major League Hacking partner-hackathon. MLH is a fantastic resource that will help you with some advice and guidance on best practices of hackathon organizing. Being the MLH partner-hackathon would grant you the access to a wide network of sponsors and would certainly increase your hackathon credibility, making search for the venue and fundraising much easier. However, please note that MLH does not admit every hackathon, therefore we suggest you craft your application thoroughly. Please learn more on their website mlh.io.

Negotiation and agreement

We took negotiation so seriously, we did one of our assignments on it.

Although sadly, due to the circumstances, we didn't get to use our strategies a lot, so our real world experience is limited.

The most important part of doing negotiation like this, is to do your research before going in. Your primary objective is to show how much value you can provide to the company you are talking with, and getting as much money for it as possible.

Know the company, their customers, and whether they are looking for new talent. The three big things you can provide to them are: [1]

• Premium access to highly talented individuals either in the workforce or will be soon;

• A way to push their name out there to possible customers, especially if they are selling to tech companies;

• A good chance to network with other companies that are supporting the hackathon.

Emphasize how much value you are providing them, use your inexperienced student charms, and try to make it fun :)

On talking about the numbers and the money, similar to the last page of the prospectus, we recommend starting with a high number, and trying negotiating more things for more or the same amount of money. The things you are providing to the company is coming to you for mostly free, but the advertisement and access to the hackers are big things to companies, and your deal can be most likely cheaper than regular advertising, albeit more risky.

To get even more ideas about what to do, please read the assignment, you will also learn all about the HCs :)

HC Footnotes:

[1] #negotiate: On this page we have shown how we use this HC to its fullest. You must keep iterating the things of value you have, following a principled negotiation strategy. Trying to understand the perspective of the sponsor together with having a strong BATNA was crucial during our negotiation with both sponsors and the venue to identify the clear negotiation boundaries. We always exclusively followed a principled strategy as we (or future Minervans) would strongly benefit from our partners getting more from the hackathon thus improving our hackathon and simplifying the collaboration for students in the class of 2024.