Colosseum : The Y-Combinator For Solana | Matty Taylor

Matty is the man behind some of the biggest hackathons in all of crypto (such as Grizzlython and Hyperdrive among many others). He recently left his role as Head of Growth at Solana Foundation to build Colosseum, an organization dedicated to running Solana-centric hackathons with a built-in accelerator for select winners. Throughout this episode, we get into the nitty gritty of why hackathons have historically produced some of Solana's best projects (Tensor and STEPN for example) and how aspiring founders can best position themselves for success.

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Time Stamps

(0:00) - What is Colosseum?

(6:11) - IRL vs online hackathons

(12:00) - Why YC was superior to incubators

(15:27) - Matty’s journey before Colosseum

(18:53) - Solana projects that got their start in hackathons

(22:21) - Selecting Hackathon winners

(28:15) - Finding world changing ideas

(39:50) - Rising focus on mobile

(44:14) - Advice to builders

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Podcast Resources

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Episode Resources

Follow Matty : https://Twitter.com/MattyTay

Follow Colosseum : https://Twitter.com/ColosseumOrg

Om Podcasten

Think beyond Ethereum and dive deep into the world of next generation blockchains. Join us as we engage with founders, engineers, researchers, investors, and critics of high-throughput, low-fee, parallelized blockchains like Solana, Monad, Sei, and more. Unlayered is for crypto natives eager to stay updated with the latest developments, complementing shows that focus primarily on Ethereum and its layered scaling approach.