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  •   12 days ago

Credits and marketing issue

Hi everyone,
I have a quick question for the organizers:
As part of the competition, credits for Gemini AI and Google Cloud are supposed to be allocated (which haven't been yet), but there are no funds allocated for promotion. How do you see the role of marketing in this competition?
Wouldn't make sense to allocate a basic budget for marketing efforts - such as Google Ads or other - to truly achieve the goal of "Sell -> Market it. Grow it. Show the revenue"?
Looking forward to your thoughts!

  • 7 comments

  •   •   12 days ago

    +10000 Having some tangible credits to spend on Google's (and even Meta's) marketing & ads related products will greatly increase the quality of this competition.

  •   •   12 days ago

    Agreed. If hackathon participants already have enough resources and capabilities to acquire customers and generate revenue, the prize money itself wouldn’t matter. As we all know, we’re strong at development but weak at marketing, and we also lack the funding needed for marketing efforts. Google should provide ways to help fill these gaps, rather than offering a small bounty to advance its own business.

  •   •   11 days ago

    I'm curious, how much do you all think you need for marketing efforts? Also, what would you consider sufficient enough for this spend in the form of credits?

  •   •   10 days ago

    For many successful products, marketing eventually becomes one of the biggest cost centers - commonly around 10–30% of revenue, but in sectors like SaaS, mobile apps, or games it can easily exceed 50% during aggressive growth phases. In gaming especially, some companies reinvest the majority of their revenue back into user acquisition. Because of that, “sufficient” credits really depends on the category, but realistically it needs to be enough for continuous testing, optimization, and scaling... not just a short promotional campaign.

  •   •   9 days ago

    Similar start-up hackathons like RevenueCat Ship-A-Thon would include free-trial periods with sponsored services (appSumo-style stuff, a free domain registration, etc). It's disappointing there's nothing like that here.

    The Rules page states that you must report your Marketing & Customer Acquisition spend as part of your submission. Judges don't necessarily expect that your marketing spend will be zero (although you may do that.) There's a conception circulating that this is a zero-cost hackathon, but I think that's mistaken. Forming a lawful business isn't without its costs (legal, registration, technical, accounting, etc.)

    Part of this challenge is whether your AI can scale a business. Start by having your AI make the first sale, and (if you're trying to start something without -- or with minimal -- up-front spend) have your AI take that first sales revenue and decide how best to put it right back into the business to make more than one sale next time. This is easier dreamed of than executed. : )

    Hackathon is already underway; I wouldn't wait around for hand-outs. You will need to report your sales figures in May on your project submission, and the month is almost finished.

  • Manager   •   9 days ago

    Thank you for your question and comments about credits and thank you for your patience! Google Cloud and Antigravity includes getting started resources directly through their websites at https://cloud.google.com/free and https://antigravity.google/. We’ll be sharing more details about additional resource packages in the coming weeks — stay tuned. For details on how to claim the Antigravity credits review this: https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/how-to-claim-your-100-credits/165364

  •   •   9 days ago

    Heh... what a mess...
    I think we've reached the point where big tech companies have decided to use AI tools to organize hackathons... but they haven't considered that AI slop isn't the best material for managing competitions... for promotional purposes...

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