For Assemble, we committed to doing a hackathon for 150 people in San Francisco before we even had a venue and although it’s not highly recommended, we were eventually able to deliver! First we started by looking at our (Hack Club’s) network. This meant looking through who our supporters were and who we knew. From there, we made a list of about 10 venues that we think will both suit our needs (space for 150 people and allow us to stay overnight) and also have some sort of personal connection to us. Some of these venues included GitHub (which we had worked with), Twitter (one of Hack Club’s donors was connected), Microsoft Reactor (one of the organizer’s fathers worked at Microsoft), and Figma (our hackathon venue!!!). We recognize that not every high school hackathon organizer would have the same connections to these huge tech companies but you’re definitely connected to someone that might run the local library or work at a university and leveraging these networks can be super useful.
Once we had a “wish list” in mind, we began drafting our pitch letters. Here is the one we used to reach out to Figma. In this email, we wanted to do 4 things:
- Establish personal connection
- (For Assemble/Figma) Dylan had previously done an AMA with Hack Club
- Share our excitement and vision for the event 2. (For Assemble/Figma) Assemble was going to set the standards for what hackathons could look like
- Pitch why Figma is the company we want to do this with 3. (For Assemble/Figma) A lot of Hack Clubbers use Figma and we love the venue
- Have a call to action 4. (For Assemble/Figma) Can we host it at Figma and can we do a call with you?
The next part was figuring out who to reach out to and finding their contact. Since we only shortlisted venues that we had a personal connection to, we just went with whoever we were already connected to (in Figma’s case, that was Dylan, the CEO & Co-Founder of Figma). So, we started sending out the emails! About 3 each week because we didn’t want multiple companies to commit then having to say no (in hindsight, that probably would’ve been a good problem to have). We were rejected by many locations and ignored by others. Then, the magical Figma response arrived! That was the beginning of us learning what it means to actually acquire a venue with a major tech company. It took exactly one month to smooth out the details and confirm the venue. This included:
- Multiple calls with the Figma team to figure out logistics for the venue (eg. How many toilets do you have? Can we take photos and videos?)
- Discussions to ensure the legal aspects of things were covered which led us to buying event insurance (If you’re a US high school hackathon, Hack Club Bank offers insurance quoting: https://hackclub.com/bank/), the event waivers (also accessible through Hack Club Bank) were also extremely helpful in this case
- Learning more about the area (led us to hiring 24/7 security)
Until this happened!
Finding a venue for Assemble was an adventure and we’re extremely thankful to Figma for being an incredible host and a great fit for Assemble!