How to win a student Hackathon without actually hacking

When hackathons become more of an ideathon

1. Build your team (for Hackathons with no code quality criteria)

• No need for hackers
• Get a designer
• Get a hustler

2. Invest your time wisely

• Design/develop your mockups/ prototype
• Work on your pitch, research and slides
• Use the hours well and concentrate

3. Pitch

• Compelling narrative
• 10 slides
• Show “value”
• Mention machine learning and the word API
• Show them what you did so far (partnered with this and that)
• Tell them you have a rockstar developer (even if you don’t)
• Win it

4. Enlightenment (if you don’t win)

• Sometimes you just can’t win no matter how good you bootstrap
• You will surely lose to the WebGL folks
• No matter what, you learned a lot during the hackathon
• The connections you make will always matter more in the long run

Thanks for reading!