Our guiding principle at soonami has always been this: if you are an aspiring builder and founder, your location should not matter. How widespread your network is does not matter. What matters is that your idea has product market fit ; it is scalable and you can monetise it over a period of time. But often you need a platform where these ideas can be born. 

With this in mind, we conducted two hackathons since July 2023 which resulted two amamazing cohorts of founders and builders from across the globe. It was aimed at fostering innovation, collaboration, and community building. Most importantly, to give fuel to ideas that are investable. We at soonami are committed to supporting the web3 and AI startup ecosystems with our resources, expertise and infrastructure. Our diverse community is thriving with the deep connections and intense work that are the core of all our hackathons.  16.9% of our participants are entrepreneurs, 30.3% are developers, 14.8% are AI enthusiasts and 29.7% are students.

Participation from 40+ countries resulted in 70+ submissions across two cohorts, six winners and a total of $33,000 in prize money. 

Here is a look at the winning projects from our two cohorts:

Cohort 1

1st Place - Workforce 

Prize Money:  $8k

For AI/Web3 Venture Development

Team Members: Andrew Miracle, Joy Njoku and Bethel Melariri

Workforce is a talent management software that can help businesses automate and streamline recruiting, onboarding, performance management, and succession planning

2nd Place -  Verdant.earth 

Prize Money: $5k

For AI/Web3 for Good

Team Members: Paul Peschel, Kai-Ti Wu, Tassilo Weber

Verdant is a ReFi platform to scale investments into biodiversity. It connects landowners, financial institutions, and ecologists to enable science-based, effective, and fair allocation of funds into biodiversity conservation and restoration as well as nature-positive production in the Global South. Leveraging AI and Web3 technologies, it provides  an alternative to the current centralized, opaque, and ineffective system of carbon and biodiversity credit issuance. 

The platform provides financial institutions with biodiversity commitments access to exclusive and effective biodiversity investment opportunities that are transparent and compliant with standards like ESG, CSRD, TNFD, and SBTN. Ecologists and other scientists can review and verify measurements independently and get rewarded directly. 

‍

3rd Place - Plurality

Prize Money: $5k

Team: Hira Siddiqui, Mujtaba Idrees, Tianlei Zhu

Plurality simplifies web3 onboarding by creating an on-ramp of web2 reputational assets into web3 whilst preserving privacy. This is required because currently only  4% of the world uses blockchain. This is because blockchain has a huge onboarding problem. The crypto community has been talking about web3 social platforms, but why would somebody migrate to a web3 social if it means losing all the followers and years of content that was produced on web2. Web3 socials have a huge "cold start" problem.

Cohort 0 

1st Place - PitchHelperAI

Prize Money: $10k

For AI in Venture Development

Team Members: Artem Shelamanov 🇺� & Maksym Pavlenko

PitchHelperAI refines pitches, delivers captivating presentations, and even analyzes and scores pitch decks with improvement suggestions. 

The application automatically analyzes Pitch Deck using multiple AI algorithms, and gives feedback on different aspects of Pitch Decks, and suggests ways to improve.

‍

2nd Place - VisionarAI  

Prize Money: $3k

For AI in Venture Development

Team Members: Sanyam Arya & Nisha Kumari

VisionarAI is an AI-powered platform that empowers entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into reality. It helps them evaluate the feasibility, viability, and desirability of their ideas, as well as the market potential, customer segments, and competitive landscape. It also helps them comply with the legal and ethical requirements of their industry and region.

‍

3rd Place - Startup Assistant  

Prize Money: $2k for AI in Venture Development

Team Members: Haruna Salami & Abdulrahman L.

Startup Assistant is an AI-powered platform that simplifies the startup journey for entrepreneurs. It helps them create professional business plans and litepapers, conduct market research and competitive analysis, and connect with potential investors and funding opportunities. Startup Assistant is a user-friendly, comprehensive, and effective solution that supports startups in making informed decisions and achieving their goals.

‍

We look forward to witnessing more groundbreaking ideas from all of you in the future! 

‍

Here are details on our upcoming Venturethon:

• Dates: 27 November to 3 December
• Build projects in the web3, AI and tech space
• Prize pool of $24k and $125k funding potential
• Fully remote

‍

To know more, head here

Register here

Join our discord

‍