This was the year of validation-through-friction. We spent most of 2024 stress-testing whether a pivot was necessary, running the hackathon experiment at scale, and learning—sometimes expensively—where decentralized marketplaces break down in practice. By the end of the year, we had clarity. We shipped a new product, sold it, got paid, and found a direction that actually works.
The strategic question
The entire year was oriented around one core question: do we need another pivot—and if so, what should it be?
This led us down several paths: evaluating whether a hackathon-centric pivot made sense, testing hackathons as a customer acquisition channel, running larger and higher-stakes events, and preparing infrastructure for very large crypto prize pools.
At the same time, we constantly questioned whether it was rational to invest heavily in compliance, audits, and insurance for a product that hadn't been fully proven yet.
The cost of doing crypto right
When you're handling prize pools exceeding $500,000 in crypto, you can't wing it. To operate responsibly at that level, we needed a full smart contract audit—about $75,000—plus insurance coverage to protect against exploits.
This created a serious tension. These costs are unavoidable at scale, but they're brutal for an unproven product. We kept asking ourselves: should we spend this money when we're not sure the model works?
This forced constant re-evaluation of risk, timing, and whether we were building something people actually wanted.
What hackathons validated
The hackathon pivot worked—in some ways.
Hackathon organizers and sponsors responded far more positively than marketplace users ever did. Follow-ups were warmer, faster, more enthusiastic. The product felt more exciting and tangible to customers. We gained significant reputation and visibility in the ecosystem. We collaborated with 50+ companies to distribute bounties.
Hackathons validated themselves as a strong relationship accelerator, a learning engine for adjacent problems, and a credibility builder.
What hackathons didn't validate
The economics were bad. The operational burden was enormous. ROI was extremely low relative to effort and cost.
Running hackathons ourselves or deeply integrating with others is not scalable. We learned this the hard way.
The Denver disaster
One of the most impactful—and painful—events of the year was a large hackathon in Denver with an $800,000+ prize pool, all processed through our platform. But because of prior agreements, they also used another hackathon platform in parallel.
This caused severe friction. Crypto payout flows weren't user-friendly. Our platform wasn't designed to sync with another system. We wrote extensive custom scripts. Constant back-and-forth synchronization. My co-founder hit serious burnout.
In hindsight, the exposure was valuable and the reputation gain was real. But financially and operationally, it wasn't worth it. This clarified something important: we couldn't scale by running hackathons ourselves.
Why the marketplace model failed
Throughout 2024, the decentralized marketplace model continued to underperform. Here's what we observed:
Companies struggle to escrow money into smart contracts. Even with KYC and invoicing, compliance remains painful. There's no immediate receipt when funds are sent. Money is locked until escrow resolution. Centralized platforms, while imperfect, feel safer and simpler.
Compliance departments resist decentralized flows. This was a pattern across almost every larger company we talked to.
The result: low conversion, high friction, long sales cycles, limited upside.
We also faced a market size problem. The hackathon market alone isn't large enough. Taking small fees across European hackathons doesn't create a meaningful business. Adding consulting on top might work, but it doesn't scale.
The pivot that worked
Out of all this friction came clarity.
A new direction emerged: a SaaS-style platform—like a CRM—for developer tooling companies.
The key insight was data. We found a potential moat through open-source and GitHub-derived data that others weren't leveraging effectively. We could scrape GitHub accounts to identify which dependencies teams use, whether they continue using a tool post-hackathon, which companies are actively building with which developer tools.
The signals—stargazers, forks, repo activity—let us approximate adoption in a way similar to anonymized NPM download data, but richer and more actionable.
This approach works in Web2, not just crypto. It avoids escrow and compliance nightmares. It aligns with clear buyer personas. It scales far better than services or marketplaces.
Comparable tools exist—Orbit, Common Room–style platforms—but our data angle and open-source focus create defensibility.
The proof
By the end of 2024, we built the new product quickly, launched it, sold it, and got paid.
We made more money in a short period than with all previous experiments combined. We finally had leverage. We had customers who clearly understood the value. We had momentum.
The biggest learning: we didn't challenge ourselves enough
One of the clearest reflections from this year is that our ideas and products should have been challenged much more aggressively and much more often.
In practice, I was largely the only person questioning strategy, product direction, and whether we truly had product-market fit. My co-founder, while strong technically, tended to accept business-direction calls rather than actively pushing back. This isn't blame—it's a structural weakness.
A founding team needs intentional counterweights. People who can question assumptions, not just execute on them. Push earlier discussions about pivots rather than reacting late.
Going forward, finding people who can challenge strategy is one of my most important goals.
Validate before building
The strongest correction during the pivot was changing the order of execution.
Instead of: Idea → Build → Launch → Hope
We did: Idea → Landing page → Waitlist → Conversations → Validation → Build
We launched a waitlist before building the product. Over 100 companies signed up without a product existing. This alone validated real demand and prevented another resource-heavy mistake.
In hindsight, this should have been done for every previous product. It would have saved time, money, and emotional energy.
Fundraising reality
Most of the core fundraising learnings from 2022 still held true—mechanics matter, narrative matters, momentum matters.
Two things got noticeably better this time:
Tighter feedback loops. We brought investors in earlier, set expectations more clearly, iterated faster on their input.
A much stronger pitch deck. Heavy iteration, many narrative rewrites, significant time on design and structure. Investors now use our deck as an example for other founders.
But here's the hard truth that overrides everything else: revenue beats everything.
No matter how good your deck is, a perfect pitch without revenue is weak. A decent pitch with revenue is extremely strong.
We closed contracts before raising. Some customers paid a full year in advance. This completely changed the fundraising dynamic.
Raising before PMF vs. after revenue
This year confirmed an earlier belief: raising before product-market fit is emotionally appealing. Raising after revenue is strategically superior.
If you raise money before PMF, you must accept that you may end up pivoting into something you're less emotionally excited about, but more rationally correct. That tension is real. You may love the original vision. The market may reject it. The next pivot may fit your skills better but feel less inspiring.
My philosophy on investor responsibility
My view on fundraising—especially with angel investors and family offices—solidified strongly in 2024.
Taking money creates a responsibility to try every reasonable pivot. Shutting down early and returning capital is not always the right move. The obligation is to maximize the chance of creating value, not to protect ego.
This contrasts with a more VC-centric pattern: raise $10M, spend $2-3M, decide it didn't work, return the rest. That approach may make sense when capital comes from large VC funds with diversified portfolios and high expected failure rates.
But when working with angel investors, family offices, individuals who earned their capital directly—my belief is you owe them persistence, adaptability, and your best effort to make something work. That means pivoting if needed, building something less glamorous but more viable, staying committed until the outcome is clear or the money is truly gone.
Looking ahead
2024 was expensive, exhausting, and necessary.
It taught us why two-sided marketplaces fail without scale, why decentralized finance often collapses under real-world compliance, why hackathons are great learning surfaces but poor core businesses, and most importantly—where real, scalable value actually lives.
We have a new direction, conviction, and proof.
Now we build on that.