Why is a Venture Capitalist Running a Developer Hackathon in India?
Fresco Capital, along with our longtime partner in India, e-Zest, are co-producing a developer Hackathon in June. The hackathon will be in Pune, India on June 24–25 and the theme is building bots. While Pune is one of the largest development centers in the world, it doesn’t host many hackathons, let alone one with $10k in prizes. It will be pretty cool and you can register here.
But more importantly, why is a Venture Capitalist running a hackathon in India?
Commitment to Learning
Fresco is not running a hackathon in order to look for startup investments in India, nor are we looking to scope out IT staff for our portfolio companies. We are running a hackathon to learn about the Indian market and better understand the Indian developer ecosystem. We will also gain tremendous expertise in AI, machine learning, and bots since we will immerse ourselves with 300+ developers building awesome bots on the Facebook Platform, Slack Platform, or Microsoft Platform. We will also get 300 opinions on the best development platforms and tools.
This is part of our dedication to continuous learning. Running the hackathon will teach us a lot about India and software development, but we will get a jump start on the brand new AI and bot platforms-helping us become more well rounded investors. Does this mean we are going to be making a lot of investments in AI and Bots? Maybe, but maybe not. It is all part of the learning process. Will we put on more hackathons? Maybe, maybe not. It is all an experiment. But you can look for us to always be going to new places and experimenting and learning.
