Lessons learned from a hackathon

Last week I and a couple of friends participated in a hackathon organized by Up Singapore. The theme was about minimising waste and improve Singapore hawker centers. This is the first time I won something in a hackathon(I’ve been to 2). There are some valuable lessons I learned from the event.

Solve an an actual problem, don’t improve an existing one

I’m an engineer, so I always think of problems from the technical perspective. This often leads to focusing on how to apply technology X&Y to solve a problem instead of identify a problem in a first place. Many times there are already similar solutions in the market.

Share your ideas, get invalidated, loop

I find myself reluctant sometimes to share about my ideas. The reasons being I don’t want people to know about it. Either because my ideas are silly or I just fear that they will be copied. After the hackathon, my opinion has changed. There are some good reasons why you should share your ideas:

First, your idea might be crap. If there are a single person who is not convinced by your idea, there is a good change that it actually is.

Second, there are many way to solve a problem. I have seen many teams work on the same idea but the way they execute are pretty diverse. Besides, competition can be the best way to come up with innovative ideas.

Finally, you will receive valuable feedbacks, so don’t be afraid to show your idea, neither should you be sad if your idea is invalidated. You might come up with a much better idea. And that happened to our team.

Put the right focus on multiple aspects of your product/idea

As an engineer (again), I tend to only focus on the implementation part of the hackathon, trying to pack features into the demo without thinking how to sell it. Remember you only have 3–5 minutes to present your idea/product so presentation/pitching is very important if not crucial in order to convince the judges. In fact, our app is a very simple one, pretty far from what we expect but it is enough to convey our idea.

Work in a right environment

A hackathon can be intense and frustrated at times. The key to success is to keep every member motivated and happy. You don’t have to be at the event venue all the time. Find a environment that suits your team. We went back to our apartment and had a good sleep at night. The overall atmosphere was pretty relaxing. This links to the previous point of distributing the right work load.

Tl&dr

Come up with a really good idea that actually solves a problem

Keep it simple, spend time on presenting your idea

Relaxed& have fun