Pokemon GO Hackathon

When we discovered a Pokestop Right in the Middle of Our Offices and Observed Half of the Team Launching Pokeballs On the Coffee Machine, We Told Ourselves That We Absolutely Had to Do Something Pokemon GO.

So we decided to organize a hackathon on the weekend of July 30 to develop ideas for a box around the game.

Why is organizing a Pokémon GO hackathon?

Several reasons prompted us to organize this event:

• Mix business and tech profiles to make them work as a team on innovative and exciting topics,
• Learn how to deliver a functional prototype accompanied by a draft business plan in an extremely short period of time,
• And why not create a new company? We have developed an ecosystem full of resources (people, tools, network...) to quickly set up a web or mobile application while ensuring its marketing.

Day 1: Find an idea... relevant

First step: get everyone up to speed. So that everyone can really work on Pokemon GO, you still had to have a minimum of knowledge about the game and the video game business! That's why our PikActo And a SaladeV Sauvage Introduced Us to the Game and the Universe of Gaming For a short hour.

Here's what the most hard-working among us have learned:

• Avant Pokemon GO, League of Legends Was the video game with the largest community: 30 million players active daily and 70 million active players monthly.
• In two weeks, Pokemon GO Overtook League of Legend with over 100 million active monthly players and 40 million daily active players.‍
• Pokemon GO Generates a lot of cash with more than 10 million dollars in revenue per day thanks to in-app purchases of Pokécoins To acquire in-game items and progress more quickly. Like in the other big video games Freemium, revenue is provided by only a small fraction of players (5%) who spend a lot of money (on average $20).

Second step, get ideas. Even if the team is the most important dimension in a startup, a good idea is also often necessary... Distribution of post-its and launch of a question and answer game to bring out the substantial marrow of the team's brains.

There is only one rule: do not censor yourself and do not judge the ideas of others.

This question and answer game revolved around mobile applications, video games, and broader topics. Through this brainstorming, we wanted to highlight the needs and best practices around the world of Pokémon GO. Focusing on users and their needs is the best way to start a business.

We then grouped the post-its together and defined our main ideas:

• A pedestrian site to organize hunts and arena shootings,
• A service of Pokévisits Of the Big Cities: Who Has Not Dreamed of Visiting Notre Dame While Going Fishing Magicarps On the Seine?
• A service of Pokéwalks For parents who want someone to take care of their children,
• A Marketplace to Sell and Buy Pokémons When the exchange function is available,
• A toolbox site to help trainers manage their account. Who Has Not Dreamed of Being Able to Transfer or Develop All Their Roucools In one click?
• An advertising agency dedicated to street marketing on Pokemon GO.

We then divided the tech and business profiles into the red, blue and yellow teams who started working on a major theme among the following three: Pokemon GO for businesses, Pokemon GO Toolkit and tourism-transport with Pokemon GO.

What better than a member of a team to share their experience with us. We collected Alexandre's testimony:

My team (the yellow one of course!) Then started working on this last theme. After a lively debate, we agreed to develop an application that produces personalized itineraries based on the Pokémons we want to catch and the places we want to visit. Then we establish the different stages of our project.

We then divided up the tasks to be completed and decided to check in every hour to monitor our progress. Then we got to work!

Around 22:00 We Would Have Thrown Away All Our Pokéballs We have pizza or a burger. Fortunately, our friends from Deliveroo Were happy to deliver pizzas to us! After that, digestion, blow dry your teeth and going to bed.

Day 2: Set up a business plan and a prototype in 6 hours with the timer in hand

The alarm goes off at 7 am on Saturday morning. The temptation to snooze is important... And to say that the announced objective is for everyone to present something at 2 pm... I arrive at the office, I eat a good breakfast and I summarize with my team the design of our prototype and our business plan.

What a challenge! It is necessary to quickly appropriate a hitherto unknown environment: while developers delve into the API of Pokemon GO, I am trying to understand sectors that I don't know from Eve or Adam: B2B tourism and street marketing.

I am putting together my draft business plan with:

- The concept: create personalized tourist itineraries while driving away Pokémons That We Want to Catch

- the targets: trainers, the tourism industry and local businesses,

- the offer: a free service to build personalized itineraries for trainers, an advertising service for local businesses to allow them to generate messages to trainers who pass by their homes and guided tours with Pokéguides for the tourism industry.

- competitors: traditional advertising methods (physical advertising, online advertising, street marketing) and guided tour promoters,

- the market: at the crossroads of advertising, tourism and the video game industry, which seems promising even if advertising expenses are constantly decreasing.

We are progressing and exchanging a lot. At 2 pm, we completed our prototype and our draft. Now it is the moment of truth. To Spice Up the Deal, Lots of Poképieces Are up for grabs for the best team. We present our project to the other teams. Feedback is positive and rewarding. We even have the most successful prototype of the three projects. Oh These Yellow Ones, Always Better Than The Others!

That's it, the hackathon is over and the weekend can finally start!

In short

In 36 hours, we were able to produce three box ideas with three functional prototypes and business plan outlines:

• A site listing all handlers their personal account data as well as information on Pokemon GO. This site will be intended to become the Marketplace When in-game exchanges are allowed.
• A street marketing agency to optimize the number of visits to local shops and brands thanks to the power of Pokemon GO,
• An application generating personalized itineraries based on Pokémons That we want to catch and places we want to visit a city.

But we also learned a lot from this hackathon:

• teamwork is not an easy activity: it is necessary to ensure that each team coordinates, does regular checks and distributes tasks,
• The development of the prototype must be done in fashion Lean : the idea must be constantly adapted according to what we are capable of doing in an extremely short period of time,
• The Deadline is effective because it pushes the team to overlook certain details to focus on what matters most.