MIT Solve

Solution overview

Our Solution

Gitcoin

Tagline

We help aspiring software engineers earn, learn, and network. ($3.5mm distributed so far!)

Pitch us on your solution

Gitcoin's mission is to grow open source software.

We create new economic opportunities for coders in open source software, with a double sided market. We connect funders to connect to coders they want to hire, and connects coders to people who can fund them.

Our product is a blockchain-enabled, which means that anyone with a web browser can earn from anywhere -- no need to access the traditional banking system.

Gitcoin has delivered $3.5mm+ to open source coders in the last 18 months and is just getting started. See our traction at https://gitcoin.co/results

Film your elevator pitch

What is the problem you are solving?

In the 21st century, learning software development is a possible path to a new career and a new life for millions of aspiring youth across the world.

There are 26 million software engineers in the world, but access to software engineering networking, learning, and earning opportunities are limited to the most privileged communities.

In a world thats being transformed by

- open source software - allowing people to build on top of each others solutions without ever meeting

- remote work - allowing people to contribute from anywhere in the result

- blockchain technology - allowing people to earn from anywhere in the world

we believe there is opportunity to create a solution that leverages these trends to allow the millions of aspiring software engineers in the world to their next career opportunity.

Who are you serving?

We are working with our end-users to understand their needs in a few ways

1. By signing up at gitcoin.co they can build a profile that expresses their skills and desires.

2. We have done tens of user interviews with coders across the world to understand their specific needs and aspirations in a more qualitative way.

3. We invite them to join our weekly livestream at gitcoin.co/livestream to give us an opportunity to socialize with us and get to know each other.

What is your solution?

Gitcoin.co offers the following products:

Gitcoin offers Virtual Hackathons about once a month; Earn Prizes by working with some of the best projects in the decentralization space.

Gitcoin Grants are a fast, easy & secure way to provide recurring token contributions to your favorite OSS maintainers. Plus, with our NEW quarterly $100k+ matching funds it's now even easier to fund your OSS work!

Gitcoin Bounties - Collaborate and monetize your skills while working on Open Source projects through bounties.

CodeFund (by Gitcoin) is an open source ad platform that funds contributors of the open source ecosystem

Gitcoin Quests is a fun, gamified way to learn about the web3 ecosystem, earn rewards, and level up your decentralization-fu!

These products are all built using python/django/javascript, witha sprinkle of Ethereum.

Select only the most relevant.

Increase opportunities for people - especially those traditionally left behind and most marginalized – to access digital and 21st century skills, meet employer demands, and access the jobs of today and tomorrow
Upskill, reskill, or retrain workers in the industries most affected by technological transformations

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

Boulder, CO, USA

Our solution's stage of development:

Growth

More about your solution

Describe what makes your solution innovative.

We are built in a future forward way - we are leveraging open source software, blockchain technology, and remote work to create a solution that is native to the 21st century.

We are live today, and have created $3.5mm worth of results, and over 37 'Gitcoin Alumni' -- people whose lives have been changed by working on Gitcoin.

Why do you expect your solution to address the problem?

The inputs into our Theory of Change are:

- Employers want to be able to get access to new sources of talent.

- Coders want access to the best employers, or economic opportunieis

The activities that we manage are:

- a matching engine that connects coders to the best employers for them

- a user profile that allows people to show off their digital self

- a learning platform that allows coders to prove what they know.

- people can post grant applications or work applications on Gitcoin to describe their needs.

The outputs that we create are:

- New economic outputs: like features being created or bugs being fixed, for our employers

- New "first date"s being created every single day.

-If the "first dates" dont work, then people move on quickly and find their next match.

The long term outputs that we are

- People are creating new full time economic relationships

- Coders are working for the open internet (maybe managing several clients at once, many of whom they met on Gitcoin)

Who may suffer because of our solution?

- Recruiters will not be able to charge $20k/placement for a technology worker anymore

- Traditional employers will not be able to move as fast as Open Source devs anymore.

Select the key characteristics of the population your solution serves.

Children & Adolescents
Rural Residents
Low-Income
Refugees/Internally Displaced Persons

How many people are you currently serving with your solution? How many will you be serving in one year? How about in five years?

We are currently serving 30k coders across the world, and expect to be serving 50k by this time next year.

We hope to be serving 1 million developers within the next five years.

What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?

Our goals are to:

- Create 1000 Lives changed - how many people can we conclusively call 'Gitcoin Alumni' who have graduated on to a better life because of Gitcoin?

- Reach financial sustainability. We are 1/3 of the way there right now, and with scale we think we can become a sustainable enterprise.

- Reach 1 million developers.

What are the barriers that currently exist for you to accomplish your goals for the next year and for the next five years?

1. Blockchain technology is hard to use, the modern web consumer is not used to private key management, and sometimes doesnt know how to transfer their funds into their local currency.

2. remote work creates challenges around timezones, cultural barriers, and the fostering of social reloationships.

3. Getting the word out - how do we let people across the world know that there are new opportunities to build relationships, earn, and learn, about software?

How are you planning to overcome these barriers?

1. We believe that we can leverage our world class product and engineering resources to work around the blockchain UX issues that are prevelant today. We will aim to make our app feel more like a standard web app.

2. We believe that knowledge is power, and we are creating training resources to cultivate the social norms of the Gitcoin community.

3. We are building tools (like the gitcoin avatar builder, or Gitcoin Quests) that are so useful to consumers that they will spread via word of mouth.

Select one.

My solution is already being implemented in one or more of ServiceNow’s primary markets

If you selected “My solution is already being implemented in one or more of ServiceNow’s primary markets,” please provide an overview of your current activities in those markets.

We are a remote first, global, service, so the question "provide an overview of your current activities in these markets" is kind of a funny one to us.

Our top markets according to google analytics are:

1. USA

2. India

3. UK

4. Germany

5. Canada

If your solution has a website, provide a link here:

https://gitcoin.co/

If your solution proposes an app or product that is available, provide a link to your app or product online here:

https://gitcoin.co/

If you have additional video, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link to your video here:

About your team

Your business model & funding

Partnership potential