BREAKING: Mastercard is introducing always-on stablecoin settlement on Solana.
3.7 billion cards. 210+ countries. One of the largest payment networks on earth, now settling onchain.
GM Istanbul! 🇹🇷
@IstanbulBlockWk Day 1 is officially here, and Superteam Türkiye is bringing the heat to the city.
If you are around, we have a packed schedule of shipping, alpha, and networking.
Here is today’s menu 👇
solana is global & superteam is a cheatcode
2,857 projects submitted to the @solana Frontier hackathon -- up 1.8x from prev editions despite a worse market!!
incredibly proud of our @superteam teams that run local outreach, workshops, pitch sessions, build stations, demo days, etc to get teams over the line
jobs not finished...
This is insane.
19,000 hackers registered for Frontier by @colosseum since April 6, including 16,000 new.
That's 15 new Solana builders born every hour.
Turks have been shipping.
30+ projects pitched.
4+ cities onsite.
Founders from all across Türkiye.
Live demos, real judges, actual teams building on @Solana.
This is what @Colosseum hackathon season looked like in Türkiye.
Now onto the leaderboard 🇹🇷
12 hours.
Half a day between you and the arena.
You’ve spent the last 5 weeks building.
Now it’s time for the final polish.
Clean it up.
Tell the story.
Hit submit 🏛️
The projects we saw these past two days were incredible. But what really stood out was how Turkish builders had each other’s backs 🤝
This is what a real ecosystem looks like.
You made us proud 🇹🇷
5 weeks ago, some of these builders had never shipped a product.
Today they pitched live to a jury, took real feedback, and walked out sharper.
Tomorrow they submit to @Colosseum Frontier.
Whatever happens next — this room was proof that Türkiye is building 🇹🇷⚡️
🚨 We’re live with our SuperteamTR Station & Demo Day!
Tune in and follow the action as teams turn ideas into real products in real time.
https://t.co/MTfHeFFmXe
90% of my advice for @colosseum founders comes to these ideas:
Nail the 3-5 word pitch. Language is the basis for shared understanding, and nobody will use your product if they can't understand it. Use metaphors liberally to assist (e.g. Robinhood for agents, Pumpfun for startups).
In fact, you should solve for the language before you build anything, because the product emanates from the language. If you have the thought "a wallet for Polymarket users" or "Agents that serve as multisig members for Squads," in fact you've solved for audience & product already and now the rest of what needs to be done is relatively simple.
The canonical example from James Currier @ NFX (legendary investors) is "cloud storage for your photos" vs. "photo sharing app" is the same technical infrastructure but the first is a small idea and the second is a world-changing idea (Instagram).
Then, build for the right distribution channel.
If you're building a product to share trades in group chats, don't build a web app where people need to share links. Build a Telegram app or iMessage keyboard.
Lastly, keep your product vision narrow. Don't build generic infrastructure or building blocks. Solve single use cases with tremendous depth & make it a magical & delightful product, and then expand after you find happy users.
Specific language & audience, pick the right distribution channels, then a narrow product. In that order.