[aliya_bhatia]

I completely agree with this perspective, and think it goes beyond putting marketers in their place to also building pretty deep trust with your future market. The idea I took to NYC EDU Startup Weekend (not exactly a hackathon but often similar outputs) sounded attractive for lots of teachers I pitched it to, but ultimately they were skeptical it could be done.

By using Startup Weekend to create a MVP, we were able to switch the discussion from "What if we could..." to "We've built the product. What do you think?" Before we had even incorporated, teachers and administrators who saw the before and after could rest assured we could implement on our vision and continue to iterate on it.