During this week, I participated in one of the best Hackathon organizers in East Europe, Garage48‘s event – Student Startup Supercamp, an annual entrepreneurship BootCamp, and our team won 3rd place. So, in post #12, I will share my experiences with hackathons and some hints to win competitions and mistakes you should not follow.
Congratulations! As this blog follows the brevity principle(quality of being brief), you are at the second level!😊
I remember my first Hackathon was in 2017, by Techstars Tourism Startup Weekend. I was so young, and during those three days, I felt the vibe of the startup ecosystem and fell in love with that dynamic environment. Then it continued with too many competitions and hackathons. Basically, the main idea behind hackathons, based on some specific topics, you should build innovative solutions which have the potential to scale and form a business. In those events, there are many participants and teams working on idea validation, coding, and prototyping.
Entrepreneurship BootCamp has a slightly different context and takes a bit longer around 4 days. You have freedom in organizing teams and are not restricted to specific categories of ideas. There are a variety of mentors and founders from forerunning companies. The whole process is simple but extensive.
- You announce your idea, a short pitch that gives information on what you want to build. If people find it exciting, they join your team. If you have a team beforehand, you can also participate with that team.
- You should validate your idea. If there is a problem with validation(your hypothesis is wrong, and you could not find the market need), you can pivot or change the original idea. During that stage, you get many business-related mentorships that help you find the right customers, build connections, show you potential growth opportunities, and sometimes criticize or praise your performance.
- After validation, there is a phase of prototyping/coding. Choosing the right type of product depends on your team members. If you have mid-senior level developers and designers in your team, and the product is not very complicated, you can build a very simple MVP(minimum viable product). In most cases, you do not have those people. Then you can choose a clickable prototype. During this step, tech and design mentors help you perform the most straightforward solution in the shortest term.
- The final stage is pitching and demonstration. Based on predefined criteria jury committee assess your product and team’s performance.
Wow, you are at the third level. Let’s play a game!😉 I bet you will read till the end.🌠 The show must go on!🤩
Now, let’s discuss why you should participate in hackathons:
- Leave your comfort zone💣 – It brings real progress you can feel day-to-day.
- Improve skills🤹🏼♀️ – You will definitely learn something new, including hard and soft skills. Maybe you will learn a new programming language, or collaboration, communication, teamwork, time management, and working under pressure as valuable skills. Those intensive sessions in hackathons are equal to some whole semester subjects.
- See your condition 💪🏼- Competitions are good places to assess your current skills. As check-ups are needed to be healthy, also students can measure their real strength by building creative solutions.
- Chance of becoming the next unicorn🦄 – It may sound unrealistic, but the probability shows it is possible. Some examples that emerged from hackathons are Zapier, Carousell, Talkdesk and others.
- Building connections🔗 – You can find your next business partners, upcoming colleagues, or even future spouse during those events😂
- Bonus🎁 – Addition to your CV: If you are a student and do not have much experience, this is a good way to show you are ready for challenges and have already worked on a real project with the team.
The first time developers apply to a position, before taking them to the next level, I ask whether you participated in any hackathons. If the answer is “No,” I purchase the first tickets and say, after participation, apply again.
Krists Avots, Co-founder SaltoX
Now some people think hackathons are too rushed and not suitable for human nature, and it is understandable some artificially created environments may challenge participants. They can easily be negatively affected if they follow any of the mistakes I made over time. Also, there are some hints that may bring you victory:
- Do not kill yourself😵- Working hard is inevitable during competitions. But you can do it smartly. Do not starve, pay attention to your sleep, hydrate properly, and if you are going to pitch at finals, do not forget to have a rest before. If not, you will have dizziness in the head, a high level of stress, exhaustion, and readiness to lose the game.
- Build a strong team🪡 – Probably that is the most important factor, and it requires headhunting skills for both idea owners and people with capacity. Define your work values before the competition. Just be sure to have people who are courageous and ready to build the product with their full effort.
- Set clear goals🎯 – It is important to set clear goals before the event, ideally mentioning, “we will be among the winners, and for this reason, we are here.” sharing this with teammates will motivate all of you to build something really cool.
- Fail fast, learn faster⚡- Do not stick to the original idea. Change it when it is needed. Just be cautious about doing too many pivots. It will also reduce your chances of victory. Because of timing, maybe a maximum of 2 times is ideal.
- Share and check progress(do not overcontrol)📈 – If you are in a business team, check what happens in development, and also consider doing vice-versa. But be sure you are doing it in a balanced way.
- Listen to mentors(not all of them)👩🏻🏫 – In most cases, mentors want to assist you and give you the opportunity not to make mistakes. However, sometimes that is not possible to do all the details they mention. You should have a clear business and technical mindset and consider the most logical advice. Probably, that is the most difficult point because it requires a level of experience.
- Trust your teammates⚒️ – Be sure you allocate the tasks among team members. That will help your concentration and improve the overall team performance. Working on your own tasks will raise efficiency as well as relations among members.
- Analyze the market all in and out🌐 – That will help during the pitch, designing a prototype, finding a unique value proposition, and defining future roadmap.
- Have fun😹 – When you make mistakes, laugh hard yourself, make jokes, talk to people, and enjoy the moment. Do what you love, love what you do!
These were my main insights about hackathons and tech competitions if you have any other suggestions, feedback or idea, feel free to share.
Congratulations! You nailed it! I hope you find it useful. Have a pleasant day🌻
