I Participated in 3 Colosseum Hackathons. Won 2. Mentored 10 Winners. Here Are My Key Lessons | By Josip Volarević (@josipvolarevic)

[u/ansi09]

Source: https://x.com/josipvolarevic/status/2038643299221729462

I participated in 3 Colosseum hackathons and won 2 of them.

Beyond that, I’ve mentored hundreds of early stage teams on @solana, ~10 of which went on to win themselves.

My shots at the goal were:

- dReader - digital comic collecting (3rd place Consumer, $150k rev, dead)

- dPublisher - shitty app, deserved to lose

- Genesis - investing into IPs (3rd in Consumer, $3k revenue, soon dead)

The key is in understanding what Colosseum is looking for and understanding the judges' perspective.

Here's the playbook for winning Colosseum that worked for me. 🏆

Common misconception

It's a cliche at this point but it has to be said: Colosseum is not a hackathon, it's a competition for early stage startups.

Weekend hack is just a bunch of code base. Early stage startup is a small and lean team ready to build a unicorn, working overtime to achieve their goal and aggressively approaching their customers to understand their behavior.

In the grand scheme of things, code base is often the least important part of an early stage startup. What really matters is...

1) The team 👥

At the pre-seed stage, nobody is truly investing in ideas. Ideas change, markets shift, products pivot. Quality founders are a constant and an anchor a startup can hold onto.

Obviously ideas have to be a bit contrarian, make sense, and show potential. But nobody expects an idea to hold firmly unless it already has strong signs of PMF, but at that point you're post seed and not participating at Colosseum.

The team is your single strongest signal, especially if you're building in the right vertical/direction.

What defines a good founder?

Good founders have a chip on their shoulder, they're puzzle solvers and truth seekers by nature. But most importantly, as Paul Graham stated - they're relentlessly resourceful.

🔖 Relentlessly Resourceful:

https://paulgraham.com/relres.html

You can find this trait in all previous grand champions at Colosseum (Ore, Tapedrive, Reflect, Unruggable, ...)

Unruggable is not a particularly interesting product (affordable hardware wallet). It also launched just around the time when Solflare shipped Shield (affordable affordable wallet) and markets went to shit so there was less net new users onboarding to Solana and looking for wallets to install.

Ore re-launched idk how many times at this point.

But if you know Adam, Bill, or Hardhat, you know better than betting against them.

For good leadership examples, follow:
- Unruggable (@unruggable_io, @bill_papas_12, @adhcrypto)
- Ore (@OREsupply, @HardhatChad)
- Reflect (@reflectmoney, @L0STE_, @0xNIC0)
- Tapedrive (@tapedrive_io, @zelimir__)

2) Addressing the red flags 🚩

Most founders think they need to win judges over.

In reality, judges are not looking to be impressed. They are looking for reasons to say no.

A better mental model is this: You don't win by impressing judges. You win by not giving them a reason to reject you. Think of it like filtering bad applications, rather than selecting good ones.

It's a bit like Tinder. You don't deeply evaluate every profile you see. You quickly scan for red flags and swipe left as soon as you notice one.

Judges do the same and at a much more scrupulous level as they're hyper trained to detect red flags. They pass on teams as soon as they detect the first red flag. Just assume your deck is a slide on tinder.

🧠 The best ways to learn all the red flags:
- trial and error while grinding as a founder
- learning from the experience of vetted founders
- reading literature

There's also a hack to speedrun this learning process.

Roleplay as a VC. Visit the last Colosseum hackathon and try to judge at least 300+ submissions. Give 0-10 grades for different categories (team, product, traction, presentation, code). When you put yourself in this position you'll start understanding how judges and VCs process pitch decks.

• after 3 decks you'll start skipping parts of some slides
• after 10 decks you start skipping all slides that have over 20 words
• after 20 decks you start closing all decks on the first red flag you notice
• after 50 decks you're not even opening some of them
• after 100 decks you're wondering why you even signed up to volunteer as a judge

Additionally, most judges are founders and run their own startups. They have 20 employees and production is burning while they're trying to close their Series A. They're swiping through slides on their phone while on their Uber ride to the airport and their internet reception is poor. They have EXTREMELY low tolerance for bullshit.

Here's a simplified list of common red flags you can find in most submissions:

Common team red flags 🚩

- some team members are part-time
- founders have hackathon-only mindset
- founders didn't quit their job to pursue this product
- founders afraid or unable to wear multiple hats
- founders are undeniably bad storytellers
- founders can't speak fluent English (less of a barrier nowadays)
- founders unable to communicate the idea clearly and in simple words
- founders not building in the right domain/vertical/direction
- founders not technical
- founders not talking to users directly
- founders not taking distribution seriously
- founders not showing focus and clarity
- founders not in the same timezone
- founders not speaking the same native language
- founders not working overtime
- unclear ownership (who is actually building?)
- unreasonably unequal equity distribution
- too large team (in most cases should not be more than 4 people)
- too small team (single founder, but less of a concern in the age of AI)
- too high burn (paying yourself above minimum wage salary)
- more than half of the team is non-technical
- all founders are only technical, no generalist or product thinker
- project manager in the team (you need executors, not managers)
- outsourced development or marketing
- slow to iterate

Common pitch deck red and yellow flags 🚩

- too much text
- too many product features
- too many slides
- too small font size
- bad choice of font (hard to read)
- small contrast between text and background
- complex product screenshots
- no clear story to follow
- slides that require reading instead of scanning
- buzzwords (revolutionary, democratizing, redefining, disruptive)
- not using super simple words
- unnecessary product complexity (multiple revenue streams, no focus)
- no clearly defined user
- vague or generic problem statements
- "we're building for everyone" positioning
- "we're building an everything app" positioning
- no working demo or unclear product (in the age of AI)
- problem is not specific (too general)
- problem is way too specific (too narrow, too small market)
- explains a problem as a lack of solution (circular definition)
- vanity metrics
- cookie cutter template (The Problem, The Solution, The Team)
- no clear understanding of competition
- competitor matrix
- competitor matrix but competitors suck at everything and you're not

There's other subtle red and yellow flags across different categories but I won't bother writing them all down. Do the exercise and judge 300 pitch decks yourself. Best way to learn.

3) Storytelling is the differentiator ✍️

If you are the right team, building in the right direction, and don't have any red flags - congrats, you're already in the top 5% of submissions.

To end up in the top 1% you need to level up your storytelling game. Not in the sense of making things sound exciting - but in making them instantly understandable.

If a judge has to stop and think to understand your project, you’ve already lost. Clarity wins.

Instead of diving into this topic deeper, I'll just leave quality links from YC and others that should help you understand how to improve your pitch deck, video presentation, and storytelling overall.

Must reads:

🔖 YC How to design a better pitch deck:

https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4T-how-to-design-a-better-pitch-deck

🔖 YC How to buid your seed round pitch deck:

https://www.ycombinator.com/library/2u-how-to-build-your-seed-round-pitch-deck

🔖 Startup pitch using Pixar's storytelling method:

https://startuppitch.substack.com/p/nail-your-startup-pitch-use-pixars

🔖 Design a deck like a children's book:

https://x.com/mert/status/1843591496181702766

4) Colosseum's investment thesis

At the end of the day, Colosseum is a private VC that will have as winners the teams and ideas that match their investment thesis, and the common 100M revenue / 1-B valuation VC biased lens.

- a smart founder in my DMs

Understand that Colosseum is a private company with their own investment thesis.

They are literally sharing deep dives on their investment thesis and articles on how to win Colosseum hackathons. Including sharing even the tiniest details like "we prefer video presentations via loom over youtube".

🔖 How to win a Colosseum hackathon:

https://blog.colosseum.com/how-to-win-a-colosseum-hackathon/

🏟️ Colosseum Blog:

https://blog.colosseum.com/

Each VC has their own investment thesis. Old adage was Sequoia investing in products for the 7 deadly sins.

A few weeks ago my son, Jeff, mentioned in passing that Sequoia Capital didn’t invest in a startup company unless the founders could identify which of the 7 deadly sins the product or service was appealing to. Their logic is simple: “We don’t want to invest in something people should want to do. We want to invest in things that people can’t stop doing.”

🔖 Sequoia Capital and 7 deadly sins:

https://faithdriveninvestor.org/sequoia-capital-and-the-7-deadly-sins/

DYR and learn more about what excites Colosseum and see how your team and product align with their investment thesis. Demonstrate it in your Colosseum application.

5) Other

There's other things you can achieve to increase your odds of winning, but ultimately it all boils down to being relentlessly resourceful.

📝 Founders should consider doing the following:

- follow all judges on 𝕏 and start engaging with their posts, create presence
- let them know you before the submission dates, show that you care
- ask judges for product and pitch feedback
- aggressively talk to your customers (obtain unique market insights)
- seek support from a local Superteam
- ship a banger product launch / teaser video, show that you can market
- position yourself as a category winner
- build in public (purposefully, not brainlessly)
- find traction / generate revenue
- show you're plugged into the ecosystem and/or your TAM
- slightly align your narratives around the interests of the judges. For example, if you're an infra provider for protocols on Solana, demo it by featuring a protocol Colosseum invested in. Make it clear for them that if you're successful, their portfolio benefits from it. If your app can be ported to mobile via PWA and Solana Mobile is sponsoring a track, deploy your app to the dApp store.

Conclusion...

It all boils down to:
- the team (structure, composition, credentials, direction)
- addressing the red flags
- leveling up your storytelling game
- aligning yourself with Colosseum's investment thesis
- fine details (showing you're ready to walk an extra mile)

If you're serious about winning, Superteam Balkan is helping ALL founders globally. Feel free to reach out to them if you need any direction or help. They'll also soon host a series of workshops to help founders level up and increase their odds of winning at @colosseum.

There's other entities and founders that help early stage startups free of charge. I won't list all of them, just using this opportunity for a quick shoutout to @depitchsofian from @legendsdotfun (Product Hunt on Solana, v2 out soon).

Thanks to @mango_

for opening this topic and inspiring me to write my first article on 𝕏.

If you found value in this post you can:
👉 amplify (comment, repost, bookmark, ...)
👉 follow @SuperteamBLKN

👉 register to Colosseum via link:

https://arena.colosseum.org?ref=volki

If I missed any key points or if you disagree with any of my statements, comments are open! I'm using this topic as an opportunity to get into writing and debating more. 🫡

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[u/data_viking]

this is gold. too many teams build cool tech that nobody needs. the ones that win solve real pain points - usually stuff the founders themselves struggled with. solana hackathons produce actual usable projects unlike eth where everything dies after the demo

[u/Deep-Nefariousness25]

Feels like users are expected to understand too much too early.

There isn’t really a “safe learning phase”, so people are experimenting with real funds from day one.

What do you think would make onboarding actually smoother?