ANGELHACK brings together developers, designers and lovers of ideas

These days, everyone is either working on a startup or thinking about going down that road. There seems to be lots of funding, support and ideas in this scene.

But what’s hard to find is talent. If you have a brilliant idea and are looking for like-minded people to execute it, then register for the Kuala Lumpur leg of the AngelHack hackathon that will be held on June 13 and 14 at Sunway Convention Centre in Petaling Jaya.

This 24-hour global competition brings together developers, designers and those with ideas to build prototypes.

Anyone can participate, either as an individual basis or as a team. AngelHack’s participants are typically university students and working professionals who want to work on their ideas.

This year’s competition will be driven by three themes: mobile commerce, big data analytics and smart city (a subset of Internet of Things). Judges will be looking for innovation and ideas specific to these themes.

AngelHack’s mission is to build a community via the hackathon and provide a bridge to the international technology community and the Silicon Valley.

“The idea is to build a prototype to solve certain problems or to work on ideas that have the potential of improving lives, all this within 24 hours,” says AngelHack KL brand ambassador Heislyc Loh.

Like last year, this year’s hackathon will start with a pre-hack event two weeks earlier so that participants can be briefed about the challenge and can work towards a specific prize.

Yes, there will be prizes. The winning team will receive two flight tickets to represent Malaysia at a one-week accelerator programme in San Francisco. After that, they will get a chance to pitch to Silicon Valley’s ruling elite at the AngelHack’s Global Demo Day.

#edGY speaks with Loh on what can be expected at this year’s hackathon and the needs of Malaysia’s startup ecosystem.

#edGY: Last year’s AngelHack KL unearthed a winner. Tell us more about what else the hackathon has unearthed in previous years.

Loh: The winning team QSmart went to San Francisco to represent Malaysia. They also won on the global stage. They are still operating the idea in startup mode. They are almost ready to launch a prototype in the market and already have one paying customer.

(QSmart’s idea was for a service platform and mobile application with a backend service platform that allows users to save time, rather than standing in line for a service at a bank or a cinema.)

The first hackathon winner was Owe$ome, a bill-splitting app. They’re still working on their idea. They haven’t given it up and are trying to pivot it.

Another team that came to the AngelHack event built a fashion app called Shoppr, that’s a bit like Tinder for fashion. They’ve just launched it.

Who has been coming to the AngelHack hackathons?

Last year, we had about 200 participants working on 50 ideas. About 40% were students and the rest were working professionals. As organisers, we’d like to maintain that balance.

Working professionals are generally people who have developed certain skill sets over time and have expertise in their respective industry. They have a more mature problem-solving mindset and we can expect more quality from them. Students come with great ideas and can make great stuff too.

Apart from the pitch, what kinds of mentorship and training does AngelHack offer?

Before the hackathon, we were collaborating with Microsoft to organise a workshop at university campuses. It’s a basic workshop to teach students things like how to set up a server and how to develop mobile apps on the Windows platform. This is the educational element for the students.

We reached out to 20 mentors to be available during the AngelHack 24-hour event, to help and support the participants.

Winning the hackathon is just the beginning. With support from mentors in the local ecosystem, these teams will work hard to get their idea running.

At the pitch, only one team or person wins. What happens to the other ideas and teams?

We haven’t arranged anything for them, not at this point. If anyone would like to continue your mentorship and we see a reason for that, we will support them in our capacity.

The AngelHack KL team can support them by connecting them to accelerator or incubator programmes or workshops.

What are your observations of Malaysia’s startup ecosystem? What else is needed?

We have many smart and talented people. Overall, we still lack innovation, which we think is due to lack of exposure to the world. When you have a limited world view, you have limited exposure to the problem context.

As a result, the potential of coming up with a disruptive solution that could change the status quo is far more limited. That’s what I mean by lack of innovation.

You still see the creation of ideas, products and startups but many of them are still limited to the domestic market. It seems like a good idea in the beginning but it may not last for five or 10 years.

GrabTaxi is a great example of an innovative company that introduced something disruptive and changed the way we work. We could use more of those stories, more startups that can scale and make a big impact.

What potential do you see in the local ecosystem?

Now that we have MaGIC that is actively building the ecosystem, it’s great! We don’t see similar efforts that are backed by the government in other countries. There are now many good reasons for a startup to use Malaysia as a springboard.

There is potential in areas such as B2B (business to business), financial technology, e-commerce, especially mobile first commerce, Internet of Things and big data.

MDeC [the Multimedia Development Corporation] has been putting a lot of effort into building the capacity, training talent and offering courses. Samsung just collaborated with Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka to set up a Samsung IoT Academy. This is happening next month.

What does Malaysia’s startup ecosystem need more of?

You just need people to be more hungry, with the fire in their belly to think bigger, to create something that no one has thought of before.

An entrepreneur needs to put his mind in the future. Instead of solving old problems, he needs to anticipate what will happen in the future and create technology that is more forward thinking. Don’t build another restaurant finder app or another dating app. We need more meaningful, long-term solutions.

There’s a school of thought that believes hackathons are counter-productive because it’s unnatural to force people to work on ideas under pressure. What are your thoughts on this?

It’s not unnatural. People with the right skill sets have done amazing things in 24 hours. It’s the same format globally.

Hackathons are a positive stress to put the team in motion.

We don’t expect it to be a perfect solution but something good enough to be presented, a prototype that represents an idea and serves as a solution for something.

Imagine the sense of achievement, working on ideas overnight with little sleep, lots of Red Bull. Imagine the rush of pitching in front of the judges and having your ideas validated and accepted — that’s something that words can’t describe.

To find out more, visit http://angelhack.com/hackathon/kuala-lumpur-2015. Tickets are priced at RM50 but students with a promo code get in for free.

This article first appeared in #edGY, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on May 18 - 24, 2015. Read more here