Wow! We can’t believe it has been 10 years since our first hackathon. We’ve impacted thousands of people: founders, nonprofits, investors, developers, designers, strategists, marketers, product managers, executives, everyday citizens, and more. Over the next few months, we’ll celebrate and recognize the people and places – a true good nation – that have been with us on this journey through a series of campaigns and events. Join us.

OUR EVOLUTION OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS

Our roots go back to a Facebook group for diverse founders launched in 2010 as well as in-person small group therapy sessions for entrepreneurs in 2012, but the “Goodie” brand started in 2014. Since then, we’ve evolved several times: 

The Nonprofit Hackathon Era (2014 – 2016)

In October 2013, one of Joey Womack’s mentors, Sanjay Parekh, asked him to do an event to bring some diversity to Atlanta’s startup week. Joey’s idea was a one-time one day hackathon for “good” to help local nonprofits focused on communities of color solve their internal challenges using technology. The strategy was to take entrepreneurs from the Facebook group and local software developers and put them on teams paired with ten nonprofits. Nnena Ukuku, an advisor on the project, recommended making it an “idea” hackathon to make it more inclusive and allow designers, marketers, strategists etc. to participate. Joey called the hackathon “Goodie Hack” as a nod Atlanta-based hip-hop group Goodie Mob and Atlanta’s influence on the hip-hop community and world. 

Goodie Hack was held on March 1, 2014 at Opportunity Hub in downtown Atlanta with 100+ people. The energy was high and the experience was magnetic that we hosted a larger one in June 2014 this time sponsored by Google and Be The Match. In February, the third edition was expanded to a full weekend experience and was moved Google’s Midtown Atlanta office. Dubbed “Club Google” because of the number of attendees, it took the “Goodie” movement to the next level. We began producing versions for students, professionals, and more. But although there was of excitement during the events, most of the projects to help the nonprofits didn’t continue past the hackathon. The hackathon teams needed to be led by someone that could manage a team as well see the business potential of the ideas and execute on it – an entrepreneur. 

The Startup Pre-Accelerator Era (2016 – 2018)

With a grant from Google and sponsorship from GE Power and GitHub, we launched a three-month “pre-accelerator” in September 2016 to help founders launch social impact startups. It had several parts: (1) a design thinking workshop called Goodie Ideation to help founders identify a problem and generate an idea for a solution; (2) a hackathon, called Goodie Marketing, where volunteer designers and marketers created mockups, logos, and marketing strategies; (3) Goodie Hack where software developers built the MVP’s; and (4) a Demo Day where the startups where introduced to the community.

The first cohort was called Hack Gentrification where the challenge was to create ways for people affected by gentrification to either make or save money. In 2017, the theme was called Hack Violence where the the challenge to create technology to prevent violence or help those affected by it. The 2018 theme was Hack Cancer & STI’s. While we brought thousands of new people into the tech community, both in Atlanta and other cities, and helped launched some impactful startups, we weren’t satisfied with the success rate. Our superpower was in connecting founders with amazing talent, funders, and those at large companies, but those connections are best for startup a little further along. 

The Startup Post-Accelerator Era (2019 – Present)

In July 2019 with a Tech Done Right grant from Kapor Center, we launched the Intentionally Good Project as a post-accelerator to help startups get introduced to other founders, coaches, investors, and customers. The pilot cohort began with 10 Atlanta-based startups in the Fall of that year, and we were working on the second pilot cohort when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in Spring 2020 forcing our programming to go virtual. Since then, we’ve worked with Google for Startups, AWS, Lenovo, and many more companies and scaled the community to 600 founders across 33 states in the US and 15 other countries as well as the thousands of the investors, coaches, experts and brands that support them.

We have clusters of community members in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, DC, Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, Miami, and more. We’ve worked with startups that have raised up to $60M. 

WAYS TO SUPPORT