Interview: Angela Bee Chan, Founder & CEO of Hackathons Australia
By: Nicole Dahlstrom
Tags: Female Founders, Femtech, Networking, Professional Women

To continue our interview series with Female Founders throughout Australia, we spoke with Angela Bee Chan, Australia’s Innovation Hacker. As the Founder and CEO of Hackathons Australia, she helps to activate purposeful innovation. She has participated, mentored and supported almost 500 hackathons. Angela is a TedX and international speaker and ARN Women in ICT Award winner.

In this interview, Angela tells us a bit more about hackathons and what we can see from the recent partnership between Hackathons Australia and the FemTech Collective, Sydney.

Angela, tell us a bit about yourself, Hackathons Australia, and your involvement.

Hi, I’m Angela Bee Chan and I’m Australia’s Innovation Hacker. I absolutely love travelling, and more specifically backpacking, exploring the beauties of nature, and of course, I love a good hackathon!

I run Hackathons Australia, where our aim is to activate purposeful innovation:

Activate = activating partnering ecosystems

Purposeful = aligning with the UN’s SDGs

Innovation = creative problem solving

My involvement is creating the community startup and running it in a way that is sustainable.

How did your interest in hackathons start?

In my last year of university, I found it hard to find a job. I was young and thought it would be ambitious to try and start a business but I had a problem: I had no business education, didn’t know what a startup was, had not even heard of what design thinking was and had no technical skills. I was telling my friend I wanted to help charities but I didn’t know-how. I had an idea and didn’t know what the next steps were. Luckily my friend said that hackathons are a great way to meet people, get upskilled and learn about business so a couple of days later I went to my first hackathon!

It was an enriching experience where I got to meet startup founders, understand team dynamics and leadership, and was also fortunate enough to meet executives from large organisations who gave me lots of advice. For the next 3 years I attended and participated in around 30–40 hackathons and that accelerated my personal and career development.

As you go to more and more of these events, you soon find out who you work well with, who you don’t work well with, and also begin creating a network of ‘doers’ and influencers. One evening we were at the pub brainstorming ideas for a hackathon (GovHack) and we were talking about how many of our friends and family don’t know what we do when we come to these hackathons. We disappear for a whole weekend and create something cool! Therefore we created the Facebook group ‘Hackathons Australia’ which now commits to activating purposeful innovation.

As the Founder and CEO, I feel really inspired to see people from diverse backgrounds come together to create innovative solutions. It’s like getting ying and yang together to make something that is outside of the box, innovative! and solve a problem or need.

What impact can hackathons make on women’s health / FemTech/ Women in health? Why should those in FemTech get involved?

Hackathons are a good tool to activate an ecosystem and get people together to creatively problem solve for a higher purpose. My suggestion to anyone who wants to get involved — whether you’re an individual, a community or from an organisation is to understand your ‘why’. What is your purpose and can a hackathon help you achieve this?

Health is an important issue and one that affects all of us, and in particular, there are many opportunities and problems to solve for and to support women. If you’re in this space and want to get involved you can visit our website www.hackathonsaustralia.com to see if there are any Hackathons that spark your interest. Personally, I would like to see FemTech as a collective run a hackathon to develop prototypes that meet the needs of the community.

What are Hackathon Australia’s biggest achievements to date?

a) Creating an innovative mindset and making hackathons a norm in universities, organisations and government. When we first started Hackathons Australia, it was very IT-centric. We have now made them accessible for anyone to participate. Everyone has different experiences, skill sets and backgrounds and the collaboration with diversity calls for innovation!

b) Supporting the hacker community. We’ve supported almost 500 Hackathons over the past 5 years and we see this grow year on year. We aim to get everyone in Australia to at least one hackathon and give them an unforgettable learning experience that will align with their purpose and passion. Parallel to this, we have made Australia a really attractive market for companies to run Hackathons and innovation challenges because they know we are an active community.

c) Delivering impact. Hackathons are a ripe area for people to develop their talents, form partnerships and test solutions that can lead to greater outcomes. For example, WWF and Consensys initially started their partnership through the Future Cities Hackathon in 2017. Two months ago they launched their Impact.io platform to accelerate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

What was the biggest obstacle?

All startup journeys have their ups and downs. We’ve been really privileged enough to have a supportive network. At the beginning we didn’t have a strong direction or vision — we saw the need for more innovative solutions to be tested in a safe environment over a short and pressurised environment so that we can test, measure, learn, repeat. The biggest obstacle has been redefining what Hackathons are. We repeatedly educate and reeducate the market. Also finding a sustainable business model has been hard but we listened to the market and they told us they need people to help run their Hackathons. A lot of the time we don’t listen to our potential customers and when we do, things fall into place!

What do you think is Australia’s role in the future of women in tech?

Women have one of the biggest opportunities to lead change. Technology is everywhere and technology is an enabler. We are generally great at developing empathy and having this trait is valuable to understand customer needs.

Australia as a country is a ripe place to run pilots and to test solutions out. Unfortunately, we don’t have as much investment splurging in compared to countries like the US but we are resourceful and we are forward thinkers. Therefore in order to fast track progression, we need to collectively support one another and be agents of change. Australia needs to invest in its people to give them the capability to develop ground-breaking innovations.

What is the most important piece of advice you can give to all female founders and female entrepreneurs out there?

Be yourself. Showing authenticity is super important. And people underestimate the power of a story. More specifically, your story. This will draw people in.

Another hot tip is to be surrounded by people who can inspire, encourage and support you. I’ve created a network where myself and other female founders hire an AirBnB every 3 months to focus on our company strategies, share our experiences and be honest with each other. It’s been really refreshing to do this and also an opportunity to talk about topics which we struggle with. We’ve all had our highlights and lowlights so having this safe and open environment has been key to our successes.

What’s next for Hackathon Australia?

Good question! We recently celebrated our 5th year birthday and now we are looking at ways to shift and transform. Traditionally we service organisations local to Australia around Hackathons and we are now looking forward to seeing how we can do this in a global and scalable way. We believe innovation is in our DNA and our mission is to activate purposeful innovation. Suggestions welcomed!

website: www.hackathonsaustralia.com

Instagram: @HackAUS

Twitter: @HackAUS

Facebook: ‘Hackathons Australia’

YouTube: Hackathons Australia