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Started work on HackerStash, a community-lead micro financing service for hackers and entrepreneurs! 💸 What do you think?

One of the biggest frustrations we all feel when working on side projects is that it's not always possible to pay $50-100 etc on third party tools and services, whether it's to cover infrastructure costs, or throwing $100 at an AdWords campaign.

Some projects you can launch overnight, others take months of hard graft and fine tuning, but regardless of which bracket you fit in, it's almost always going to take some decent chunks of cash that aren't necessarily easy to come by.

I've tried things like Pioneer, I'm actually in/ around the top 10 spot as I type this (with a separate project!), but I recognise that there's a philosophical gap between what they offer and what myself, and plenty of other entrepreneurs, are after...

Like, I don't need $100k of AWS or GCP credits to move my project forward, or access to 'world class advisors'. Much more often, I just need to have people to share ideas and concerns with, and the occasional funds, like $50-500, sometimes more, sometimes less, to keep the dream alive - and that's where HackerStash comes in

HackerStash is a community-lead tournament with cash prizes for the most popular 10% of projects each month. You share your project details and regular updates, and vote on fellow projects in the community. The leaderboard is based purely on whichever projects and participants are achieving the most and impressing the community - all rules are transparent and available to everyone.

If you're an entrepreneur or hacker looking for ways to stay accountable, receive great advice from your peers, and earn cash to fund your project, then consider joining the waitlist on our landing page here (launching late June at the latest):

https://hackerstash.com/

If you're looking to drop in once a month, or lurk, it might not be the best place, it's designed for engaged, high velocity, highly communicative hustlers that want to share their vision, progress, ideas and advice with likeminded people.

I'll be reporting regularly on our progress with the build/designs, and about our philosophical approach and vision in the coming days and weeks, would love to hear some initial feedback on the idea if you have any?

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    Basically, I like the idea.

    But the first question I had, where does the money come from? Where do the prizes come from?

    Anyway, I have registered once and wait and see what awaits me. As an OpenSource developer I find the idea exciting. :-)

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      Hey @dehenne - glad you like the idea! It will be a subscription based tournament, which partly funds prizes, but we’re going to work on partnerships with service providers e.g. hosting or infra credit bundled with cash prizes etc. It’s essentially a pay to play tournament, but you get rewarded/win if you’re doing great work, offering great advice, and making awesome progress.

      Everyone votes for each other, so it’s super clear what the community rates highly, no invisible hand tipping the scales etc (like some other online tech communities/tournaments). The top 10% of participants will win prizes each month, so we’re hoping that it will really support a lot of people and projects, and help everyone (regardless of whether they’re in the winning bracket that given month) involved to get great advice on how to move the projects forward.

      Ultimately it’s going to be a rock-solid, low cost way to validate ideas too - by paying money to subscribe to join a tournament then voting on other people’s projects your essentially telling that person ‘I see enough value in this idea that I’d like you to win some money to help progress it’ - much more validating than a casual thumbs up or a few kind words :)

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        Great idea. Any legal obstacles to this money distribution?

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          We're not anticipating any major issues there, but we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it! Is there anything in the model you think could be particularly problematic in that regard?

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