Matty Taylor, Co-founder of Colosseum, on Solana, Hackathons, and Growing the Solana Ecosystem | Ep. 314
In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Matty Taylor sat down with Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab to discuss Colosseum, the independent organization he co-founded.
He talked about growing the Solana ecosystem, accelerating its adoption, and how the Solana Foundation hackathons help accomplish just that.
In this interview, Taylor discussed:
You can watch the video above to learn what Matty and Matt talked about – or you can read a part of it below.
The team announced the launch of Colosseum in late January this year. The organization aims to run Solana’s hackathons, accelerate winning founders, and invest in crypto startups.
Many have described it as “essentially Y Combinator (YC) for Solana.”
The comparison comes due to the organization’s aim to sponsor and nurture promising startups.
Taylor commented that the Colosseum team is flattered by the comparison and that they have a lot of work to do “to lift up to that sort of legacy.”
However, he said,
“Honestly, long-term, we don’t really want to be compared to Y Combinator, because we think we have a very differentiated model on what we’re trying to do. This is specifically built for the crypto industry and Solana in particular.”
While one can think of Colosseum as a traditional accelerator, like YC, there is no written application. Instead, projects must win a five-week hackathon to be even considered for the program.
Taylor argued that this model is “a much better indicator of potential founder and founding team talent” than a traditional written application.
Therefore, Colosseum will run hackathons that the team has been doing for the past three years at the Solana Foundation.
Besides hackathons, they have added two more pillars to the organization: the accelerator and a
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