Welcome Lambda Schoolers!
We’re excited to have you join your own special edition of the Pioneer Tournament. Pioneer is a 30-day online game that’s built to identify motivated, productive people. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room to succeed. You just need drive.
You’ll be competing both in the global Pioneer Tournament as well as amongst other Lambda applicants. To win the housing stipend, you don’t have to win the overall tournament, just the Lambda Leaderboard.
Applying to Pioneer requires a project. You can pick anything you’d like as long as it’s technical and involves coding. If you don’t have any particular project, no worries! Below are some ideas for you to try. There’s no extra credit awarded for picking these; applying with a custom idea is fine and even encouraged.
Applications are open until the tournament starts on April 1st: Apply now.
Lambda Project Ideas
IsMyFlightSafe.com
With the 737 MAX grounding, flight safety is on everyone’s mind. IsMyFlightSafe is a simple website that given your flight number tells you how safe the aircraft is. Bonus: offer rebooking on a safer flight if the safety is low. (You’ll generate revenue from that.)
Laziest Game in the World
Lots of people open their phone without a clear purpose of what to do. They just want to tap around and get bored. Make a mobile website that just does cool stuff when you tap, perhaps based on tap speed or tap location. Sprinkle in some “secret levels” -- particular points on the screen that cause special reactions!
The Graph Museum
Scrape Twitter for images of graphs (use some API to figure out if an image is a graph). GDP growth. Human longevity over the years. Etc. Find a way to score them. Then aggregate all of these in a nice site. Imagine a museum of all the cool graphs in the world. Bonus: search through them.
Terms of Service Generator
Every company needs a privacy and terms of service page when they get started. Make a generator for these. Get your “basic template” approved by some notable legal team. I should be able to type in my company name, state, etc., and get the right HTML template to put on my site. Or maybe you even host it yourself! I bet you can grow this one enough to generate revenue during the tournament.
Snack Database
There are so many bars and snacks these days. And most of them are terrible for you. Make a database of snacks that allows users to pivot based on detailed nutritional facts of the food (carbohydrate/fat/sodium/sugar/sugar alcohol/etc). This idea could turn profitable if you use affiliate links.
Hotels For Runners
Hotels are the most lucrative online category. TripAdvisor is a multi-billion dollar company for directing people to hotel booking sites. There’s a niche market today that’s underserved: runners. Runners want a hotel that has a nice running route nearby. This may sound silly, but it’s a problem and it shouldn’t be. Curate a list of hotels that are near good running routes. Host them on a site and direct people to book. And growth hack it! Could become a surprise hit.
Hotels For Weightlifters
The same thing as above, but for weightlifters looking for good gyms either in the hotel, or nearby (with a day-pass).
Fly To Sun
This is a website where you can type in your location and it shows you the nearest drive or flight to where it’s currently sunny. Bonus: offer hotel bookings, generate even more revenue!
Applications are open until the tournament starts on April 8th: Apply now.