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Pitting teams of developers against each other to win substantial cash prizes, the Bitcoin SV Hackathons have given birth to countless new startups and innovations in the BSV enterprise blockchain space. One of the most notable success stories to come from these events so far is Britevue.
After placing second runner up in the second Bitcoin SV Hackathon back in August 2019, Britevue—then known as TrueReviews—has gone from strength to strength as co-founder and CEO Connor Murray takes his idea to new heights in the months and years since. While his runner up position wasn’t enough to win him and his co-founders the cash prize, it did win the team a ticket to the CoinGeek Conference in Seoul.
This presented the opportunity to pitch to investors in the space, which provided Murray and the team with the backing they ultimately needed to succeed in bringing their idea to fruition. The result was Britevue, fast emerging as one of the most promising startups in the BSV sphere.
Initially working for a medical records software company, Murray said he and his team waited until the second Hackathon rolled around. Based on the theme of micropayments with BSV, it allowed them to bring forward one of their business ideas—a verified online review system coupled with a mechanism for incentives, powered by the BSV enterprise blockchain.
“Before participating in the BSV Hackathon, I was working for a medical record software company. I’d been involved in the Bitcoin space for a few years and I closely followed the evolution from Bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash and then Bitcoin SV. I was looking for a project to dig my hands into, so my brothers and I started floating some ideas around,” Murray told Bitcoin Association.
“When the first BSV Hackathon was publicised in 2019, we followed the participating teams and noticed the substantial prizes they won. We decided to participate ourselves, but held out until the 2nd BSV Hackathon announced its theme of microtransactions. The theme would allow us the opportunity to explore one of our business ideas: the concept of an online review system with built-in incentives.”
Murray said he recognized that incentives for leaving reviews were important to encourage people to give in-depth feedback, going a stage further than relying on mere goodwill. In formulating the concept on holiday in Italy, he decided the incentives delivered through micropayments would fix the problem of motivated negative reviews, which often lack balance when contrasted with more limited positive reviews.
“I realised that the only way I’d ever spend an hour [writing a detailed review] was if there was a proper incentive to do so. I was never going to see this guy again—I didn’t even live in the same country as him—so there was no incentive for me to write a proper review except for goodwill.
That’s when it struck me that there was an incentive problem with reviews.”
“The few times I’ve leapt to giving online interviews in the past is when I’ve been angry and tried getting revenge on a company that wronged me. The value that monetary transfer introduces is to provide an incentive to leave positive reviews that benefit the business and other consumers.”
On the BSV Hackathon event, Murray said it had an instrumental impact on his career, allowing him to secure the investment necessary to bring his project Britevue to life.
“Runners-up received a subsidy to attend the CoinGeek Seoul conference in Korea and this gave us the chance to attend the Bitcoin Association Pitch Day. At Pitch Day, any business could come in and pitch their idea to try and raise money. We participated in the event, which ultimately led to us getting funding from Calvin Ayre’s investment group. It changed our lives. It allowed me to work on the project full time and hire people to work on our platform to iterate more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible.”
Watch Britevue’s Connor Murray share his BSV Hackathon success story:
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