[HN Gopher] How to win a hackathon without coming in first place
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How to win a hackathon without coming in first place
Author : dstrainu
Score : 114 points
Date : 2021-07-14 09:46 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (strdr4605.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (strdr4605.github.io)
| artiscode wrote:
| My team won a hackathon even though I had worked there for 3
| weeks prior to the event. Why? We fixed all kinds of obscure and
| low priority bugs. I felt severe impostor syndrome afterwards,
| thinking I did not deserve it and that I contributed very little
| to success. But then I reflected back on the whole event and
| there was so much fun! Drones flying at 60mph, people talking
| about their hobbies, everyone comparing their smart watch reading
| the next morning, trying to quantize hangover. It was a three day
| event where I spent around 10 hours hacking away at a computer
| during the first day, some 5 hours during the second day and
| merely an hour during the last day.
| tylerchilds wrote:
| I appreciate each win condition has a default case of "have fun"
| herbst wrote:
| My team won with an idea that technically would not work the way
| it was proposed. Team 2 and 3 went on to found a successful
| company. Other than a free .me domain non of the winnings was
| useful for a company that would not work either way.
|
| So yeah, what is winning, it only really ment we had the most
| charismatic presentation
| geoduck14 wrote:
| > we had the most charismatic presentation
|
| Oh! The problems charisma can solve. THAT is a book right
| there.
| gumby wrote:
| That's so high up the ISO stack it won't fit on a T shirt.
| fny wrote:
| This makes me incredibly happy.
|
| In the early days of college hackathons (2011-2013), they were
| very much TechCrunch disrupt style. You were there to build
| something and win. Staff was incredibly unhelpful. It was the
| farthest thing from a learning experience I can remember.
| reidjs wrote:
| I've never won 1st, but I've won a ton of sponsor prizes at
| hackathons.
|
| My strategy:
|
| 0. Try to recruit a diverse team, you really only need 1, max 2
| engineers. If it's an industry hackathon, try to get an industry
| expert/insider.
|
| 1. Try to identify competitions that less people will compete
| for. For example, everyone does the fun crypto/AI/ML
| competitions. Without knowing anything about the space, I'm 2 for
| 2 at supply chain industry focused competitions.
|
| 2. Focus on the business solution and your presentation before
| the code.
|
| 3. Focus on frontend/visual code and sponsor APIs before backend
| code, the backend can almost always be hardcoded.
|
| 4. Save time to do a good writeup, readme, take pictures and
| videos, etc. Explain what you built clearly using multiple forms
| of media.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| 5. Recruit the wealthiest people you can or join their team.
|
| Judges looking to enhance the most valuable grouping of their
| social circle will select them.
|
| Triply so if you have VCs judging. They need money more than
| ideas.
| JohnBerea wrote:
| 10. Win by hacking the results tabulator.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I participated in a hackathon like this once. Was more like a
| war-game; very entertaining experience.
| [deleted]
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| My main question: how to choose a project for a hackathon? Should
| I go big, pie-in-the-sky, or should I bang out a couple small do-
| able things that I've been thinking of for a while?
| reidjs wrote:
| I spend some time upfront determining this based on the topic,
| judges, and my team. If you have a non-technical team, or it's
| a future tech hackathon (crypto, etc) you need to go for the
| big pie-in-the-sky ideas. If it's an industry competition
| (e.g., video compression APIs or something), you want to keep
| it small and technical.
| ausbah wrote:
| if you really want to win take your hackathon idea and turn it
| into a profitable startup
| NickSingh wrote:
| If you're curious on how to ~actually~ win hackathons, I wrote up
| my experience winning 1st place at HackUVA (University of
| Virginia's 24-hour hackathon) and then coming to judge the
| hackathon the next year on behalf of Facebook (and seeing the
| competition from the other side of the proverbial table)
| https://www.nicksingh.com/posts/win-hackathons-a-how-to-guid...
| t0mbstone wrote:
| I've actually won three separate hackathons, some of which had
| fairly large prizes (such as $5,000 in cash to our team).
|
| Here's my quick list for how to win a hackathon:
|
| 1. Pick team mates who are rock stars (I had at least one "10X"
| programmer on each of my winning hackathon teams). This is
| probably the most important point. Nothing is more important
| than who you choose as a team mate.
|
| 2. Pick a project that is easy to explain that also captures
| peoples imagination. The more people that your idea resonates
| with, the better.
|
| 3. Make use of frameworks and toolkits. Now is NOT the time to
| learn a new language (if you want to win). The faster you can
| stand up a functioning prototype, the better.
|
| 4. Put together an awesome demo. I've literally seen someone
| win a hackathon with an amazing presentation and zero working
| code before. Don't underestimate the importance of the
| presentation!
| johnjj257 wrote:
| ROFL no one cares what a shill
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account because it has been breaking the
| site guidelines a ton.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| huehehue wrote:
| Small world, I won Best Mobile Hack at hack.UVA a few years ago
| :)
|
| Notes:
|
| - This was one of many I snuck into after I had dropped out of
| college
|
| - It was a mobile app that let you scan an ISBN and would
| pirate the book for you. The results were sourced from your
| usual trackers, so 1% of the time it would work and 99% of the
| time you'd get <NSFW>.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| So a 99% success rate then!
| emerongi wrote:
| What is the experience like at a hackathon? Are you just sweating
| behind a computer screen or do you actually get time to
| socialize?
|
| It has never been too appealing to me to work for a couple of
| days under time crunch, which is what I always thought hackathons
| were. The author has done over 30 of them though, so there must
| be something else that draws people in.
| herbst wrote:
| I've been to a Google Hackathon once. And was surprised how
| little time we had on our computers.
| Uehreka wrote:
| I'd note that there are many different kinds of hackathons,
| which vary wildly in terms of length, ambition and seriousness,
| so everyone's answer is going to be different.
|
| At my previous employer, we did 2 hackathons a year. They were
| structured so that you could go hard on something you cared a
| lot about if you wanted to, or you could walk around checking
| out the (often pretty novel and cool) projects that the teams
| were working on. There was free food, karaoke, one time there
| was a cover band playing dance music. If you didn't want to do
| a hackathon project, you could take a course on Lynda or
| Pluralsight, or just goof off and hang out. However, it was a
| sort of "enforced holiday" where normal day-to-day work was
| halted.
|
| Sometimes people would work on an incremental quality-of-life
| improvement to the product that normally wouldn't be
| prioritized, with the goal of actually getting them into the
| product. I'd usually start teams doing really ambitious
| projects with lots of whiz-bang stuff with the goal of getting
| the product folks to think bigger about where our product could
| go. It was a lot of fun, and I think more companies should run
| hackathons this way.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It all depends. I've only ever participated in "work
| hackathons", and they've all been pretty easy and chill. No
| stress, no pressure, no obligations.
| pizza wrote:
| If you want to do things according to the organizer's schedule,
| you can (e.g. mingle-code-pizza-nap-code-nap-breakfast-wander-
| code-wrap up-present) - and if you don't want to, you can not,
| also. You can write a single line of code, or a thousand. You
| can talk to no one, or you can only talk, if you want. The main
| conceivable reason for it to not be whatever you want it to be
| is if it's like something your company is making you go to, but
| even still I don't think you'd be forced to work / unable to
| socialize.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I did a handful of hackathons before I transitioned from
| hobbyist coder to professional coder.
|
| There were a ton of benefits to me personally.
|
| I got to see a ton of different working styles and tech stacks.
| I got exposed to a lot of the more "playful" side of the
| technologist's Internet. I got to see what it took to rapidly
| stand up a winning "demo," while it being completely obvious to
| us (the winners) that we didn't have the best idea OR best
| implementation of an idea.
|
| Most of all, though, it was really fun to meet technologists
| from all walks of life and party with them, drinking too much
| alcohol and caffeine in a high-pressure environment. It made
| for a great way to bond with a bunch of people when I was
| otherwise just a disconnected hobbyist.
|
| I think the tone of the hackathon is really important. I've
| only ever done non-profit based hackathons: art, civics, etc.
| where the central task is on the order of "what cool or fun
| thing can we do to make the world more beautiful, more fun, or
| just better?"
|
| Also, it's an excuse for people to try out ideas and stacks
| that they weren't otherwise willing to give themselves time to
| explore.
| bahorn wrote:
| I've ran some student hackathons in the UK (worth noting we
| have a very different culture than the US scene) and we
| actually tried to discourage the whole working 24 hours
| straight thing.
|
| Events are more just workshops / hanging out, with projects
| being more of a secondary thing.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I consider hackathons and game jams where I didn't get to
| socialize to be failed ones. Some of the best ones where when I
| put together the whole project in last few hours.
|
| Also, for some people working for a couple of days under time
| crunch is the best way to spark their creative output (which
| may or may not be a sign of possible ADHD, by the way ;])
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I participated in a 24 hour hackathon. The first 8 hours or so
| were fun, the rest was scrambling to get by while drinking lots
| of Red Bull and thinking that I'd rather be home sleeping.
| Maybe it was just a particularly bad one, but it's not an
| experience I want to go through again.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I'm a very frequent game jam participant. At my first jam I
| crunched the whole time with tons of energy drinks, but after
| a few ones I decided to not use caffeine or any other
| stimulants (with possible exception at the very end) and to
| get plenty of sleep and water during the event instead. Never
| regretted.
|
| Turns out you code better when well rested.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Hahaha, that makes a lot of sense. I participated in a game
| jam recently as well and that was a great experience, and
| now that you mention it the fact that I was at home and had
| a nice 8 hours of sleep might have contributed to that.
| jon-wood wrote:
| It's whatever you want it to be. You can choose to turn up with
| winning as you're only goal, then spend a couple of sleepless
| days hammering things together. Personally I take it as an
| opportunity to play around with silly ideas a bit, but mostly
| drift around the place chatting with the other people about
| what they're doing.
|
| Last time I did one I ended up not really attaching myself to a
| team at all because I had some family issues come up early in
| the weekend that needed sorting out, and I think that ended up
| being the most fun I've had at a hackathon - I spent the entire
| weekend just chatting to people, and occasionally helping out
| teams with issues they were having where I had some experience.
| It turned into a mentorthon, which is honestly much more
| satisfying.
| lupire wrote:
| If your goal is to win a prize, why would you wait until the
| hackathon starts before finishing your project?
| harry-wood wrote:
| There's usually quite a strong "time crunch" element. In my
| more snooty moods I say hackathons only teach bad habits and
| how to throw together software in a dreadfully hacky rushed
| manner. But in truth these are not always bad habits.
| Delivering a quick prototype to a tight deadline is a useful
| skill. I usually fail miserably at hackathons, which I find
| interesting. I think it means I should hone my dreadful hackery
| skills, because I can be too slow and considered and
| perfectionistic as a developer.
| ludamad wrote:
| If it's all you practice, yeah you'll have had habits in
| longer software development. However, hackathons are good for
| figuring out how to reduce friction when you do need to
| sprint
| tsjq wrote:
| >I think it means I should hone my dreadful hackery skills,
| because I can be too slow and considered and perfectionistic
| as a developer.
|
| very nicely said.
| ant6n wrote:
| I thought people bring stuff that's almost done anyway, fiddle
| on it a bit, but mostly just socialize, then present the great
| thing they supposedly hacked together in the end.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| To each their own, I guess, but I don't understand why you'd
| waste a hackathon in that way.
| t0mbstone wrote:
| If the hackathon has a $10,000 cash prize for first place,
| you honestly think that people aren't going to show up with
| pre-built stuff?
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Well sure, definitely. But at any prize that's enough to
| be a sole reason for a person to enter a hackathon, imho
| that's either 1) a poorly designed hackathon or 2) a
| really ugly way for a company to fund R&D.
|
| I've never participated in a hackathon with a 1st prize
| worth over $500, and I'm not sure I'd want to. But I
| guess if I had a bunch of random unmonetized projects
| sitting around then entering them into high-prize-value
| hackathons could be a way to shop them around. I'm just
| not sure why an organization would call an event like
| that a "hackathon."
| harry-wood wrote:
| Yeah that's been my impression at a lot of hackathons, but I
| think it has be accepted at least to some extent, as just
| "good preparation" rather than cheating. In fact I'd
| recommend doing it (Pre-wrangle the dataset into the format
| you need. Test out some tools. Prepare some components to
| assemble). I've only been organised enough to do this on a
| couple of occasions, but this way I've enjoyed the event
| more. More likely to achieve satisfactory hack project,
| and/or more time to socialise at the event.
| tsjq wrote:
| haha! yes, that happened in my previous workplace. many
| people would keep fully-finished side projects , that they
| alone use everyday to save time, ready including fancy shiny
| ppts for "next quarter's hackathon"
|
| total
| xwdv wrote:
| In my past experience where I've won hackathons, coding has very
| little to do with winning. The goal should be to put together an
| amazing presentation and demo. This means writing just enough
| code to make everything look good, and certainly no point in
| putting together any sort of robust real world tech stack. It's
| just a waste of time that won't help you win.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| I'd like to second this.
|
| Winning a Hackathon is more about impressing the audience than
| technical prowess. I've seen more Hackathons won with a
| presentation than I ever have with code.
| ivolimmen wrote:
| For me a hackethon is about having fun. Period. In my company I
| organized multiple hackethons. As soon as Corona is less of an
| issue I will organize the next. I just rent a nice place for a
| weekend and we all come with our laptop and code in the weekend.
| And if you don't want to code; that's fine too. Once a colleague
| of mine was improving his rc airplane. We all watched him fly it.
| Some of us like to cook as well so that option is also on the
| table (pun intended).
| jkelleyrtp wrote:
| I love this so much. Thanks for the inspiration - going to
| organize something like this for my Uni in the fall!
| Clubber wrote:
| This is a serious question: how is this not just a masked way
| to get people to work weekends? Is it voluntary?
| twinkletwinkle_ wrote:
| My company takes a reasonable approach to this I think. The
| hackathon itself takes place Thursday and Friday, so it
| happens on work days. But the judging takes place Monday, so
| there's an obvious opportunity to continue to work over the
| weekend. No one has ever mentioned it though.
|
| Also the whole C-suite takes part in the judging so it really
| is an opportunity to show off your work.
| stavros wrote:
| It doesn't sound like his are company-related.
| stavros wrote:
| That sounds like the best kind of hackathon. I hate the
| corporate-sponsored ones, they're either "here's some food,
| come interview for us" if you're the public or "here's some
| food instead of overtime" if you're an employee.
|
| Your kind sounds like the original spirit of the hackathon,
| just a bunch of people making things together.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Reminds me of when my friends and I used to have LAN parties in
| the 90s. Good times.
|
| I like your idea of a hackathon. Might just arrange something
| like this post-Covid.
| enjo wrote:
| When I worked at Riot Games they did something similar and it
| was fantastic. Twice a year for a couple of days the whole
| company stopped down to just work on cool stuff. Game projects
| were common of course.. but people would just kind of do
| whatever was cool to them. One of my favorite parts about
| working there.
| float4 wrote:
| About 5 years ago, I attended a hackathon, as I did every so
| often.
|
| My team was comprised of CS undergrads and we made something that
| was technically interesting but not at all marketable. This was
| fine with us, as we were there to have fun. To us, that was
| "winning".
|
| However, another team was clearly there to _win_. Their "leader"
| was a CS grad student, and they were developing an iOS app that
| would show you a random weighted complete graph. The task for the
| human was to build a hamiltonian cycle with minimum edge weight
| sum, i.e. they had to solve a TSP. Their app only showed very
| small graphs (<= 5 nodes IIRC) with significant edge weight
| disparities, such that it was usually trivial to find the correct
| solution. During their presentation they went on to say that they
| were using the solved puzzles as input for an AI that could then
| be used to solve larger TSPs. This was very interesting and
| valuable they said, as the TSP is relevant for delivery
| companies, logistics etc.
|
| That grad student _must_ have known that it was pure nonsense,
| but they actually won. There were people from pretty reputable
| tech companies in the jury, yet they won.
|
| My teammates and I weren't mad though; to us, and some CS
| students from other teams who clearly knew what was going on, it
| was pretty funny.
| 0xEFF wrote:
| Could be the early stages of a Theranos play.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I know it's probably just me, but most tech startups look
| like a Theranos play these days. So much technology, so
| little real value...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'm not a scientist, but we're going to hire the best 100
| scientists in the world and turn cheap dirt into valuable
| rechargeable light-weight batteries.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Is the trend of "Uber for something something" still a
| thing?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| "The SodaStream of home gunsmithing platforms"
| delusional wrote:
| That doesn't sound that Theranos to me. Theranos was (at
| least in my opinion) a fantastic sell. Had they been able
| to pull if off it would have provided huge value to a lot
| of people.
|
| The problem was that the technology was all fiction.
| iGu35 wrote:
| https://www.google.com
| armchairhacker wrote:
| This is similar to my experience.
|
| Part of the problem is, the entire idea of making the "next big
| thing", which will make millions of dollars, in just 48 hours
| is ridiculous. Even just coming up with the _idea_ is kind of a
| stretch, but making any sort of prototype and presentation
| which would seek this idea is very, very rare.
|
| I like the concept of a "game jam" better, because then you're
| just making games. Or something like that, where the entire
| goal is to make a toy project. But then it's harder to get
| approval and/or funding, I guess.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| If your goal is to win a hackathon (or a game jam, or anything
| similar), your project is there only to support your
| presentation. It's how you sell your idea what gets you the
| price, not the project itself - it doesn't even have to work
| all that well as long as you present it right.
|
| Of course details depend on the judging rules of the particular
| contest - you "market" your project differently when there's a
| panel of jurors and differently if it's the contesters that
| vote on each other's projects. In contests with panels of
| jurors you can often predict which project each jury member
| will likely vote on based solely on their professional
| background.
|
| I've been to countless game jams and my first win (after a long
| while) was with a simple one-gimmick game that barely managed
| to not crash during the presentation. If you're there to have
| fun with technical stuff, you have small (but non-zero) chance
| of winning, because perfecting your presentation is rarely what
| people who go to hackathons for fun consider fun ;)
|
| TBH, the best jams often have no voting and no prizes at all :)
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I wonder if you might have misinterpreted it. It could have
| been that the grad student's team was also there for fun, but
| the game they were playing was "can we sell the judges on
| complete nonsense."
|
| Honestly, that'd be a fun hackathon in of itself. You'd declare
| this the stated goal, and at the end of the hackathon there'd
| be big, dramatic presentations. You'd bring in a half dozen
| judges who would not be informed of the hackathon's purpose who
| would judge the projects in earnest, and you could have a
| couple more judges who'd be judging primarily on the audacity
| of the fiction.
| pvitz wrote:
| The Underhanded Hackathon!
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(page generated 2021-07-14 23:01 UTC)