hackathon
How to win an AI hackathon / buildathon
Line Hjartarson & Andreas Melvær
•
5 mins
Taking part in an AI hackathon - or buildathon - can be an awesome opportunity for entrepreneurs and innovators.
These sprints - often over 48-hours - help you:
validate your idea
advance your product
get access to money and expertise
win free software support
get your - and your product's - name in lights (see below)
But innovators often approach them in totally the wrong way.
We recently helped the fantastic team at Get to Give win a buildthon run by the fastest growing software company in the world, Lovable.
If you want to find out how we did it - and how to give yourself the best chance of success - then here's our step-by-step guide.
Press coverage of Get to Give's buildathon win
Day One is not Day One
Let’s be honest: the notion of a “48-hour” hackathon is a LIE.
If you show up on Day One waiting for inspiration to strike, you’ve already lost.
The teams that walk away with the oversized cheques and the VC meetings didn't win during the weekend. They won in the weeks before.
A buildathon isn’t a sprint; it’s a heist.
You need a plan, a map, and the right tools packed before you even step in the building (all of which we'll cover below).
Don't be looking for ideas when the clock is running
2. Make sure you're solving a real problem (not just a cool one)
We see the same error all the time.
Innovators:
fall in love with a piece of tech and try to retrofit a problem to it; and/or
try to solve a problem they have, but no one else has (or least not a scalable number); and/or
try to solve a problem in a way that no one needs
In every case the true value of the idea exists in their head, and their head alone.
Don't be that person.
Start with a validated idea. Something that actually hurts and needs fixing - ideally urgently.
If your idea doesn't solve a genuine pain point, no amount of LLM magic will save it.
Hackathon judges are looking for utility, not just a tech demo.
Validate the problem before you write a single line of code.
Problem solvers: Get to Give helps children develop empathy and generosity
3. Mise-en-place: pre-cook your ingredients
Chefs don’t start chopping onions when the dinner rush starts. They prep.
Make as many ingredients as you can before the clock starts ticking. In particular, consider prepping your:
UI Components: Have your buttons, cards, and nav bars ready
Assets: Stockpile your images, icons, and animations
When the hackathon starts, you want to be assembling, not designing from scratch.
You should be building the house, not making the bricks.
4. Kill the “AI Aesthetic”
If your app looks like it was designed by Midjourney v4 (by that we mean neon purples, cyber-grid backgrounds, glowing nodes, etc.) you are going to blend in with 90% of the room.
To win, you need to stand out. And right now, standing out means looking human.
Create a unique visual identity.
Design something that looks tactile, grounded, and distinct. (And pleeeease avoid the default "AI purple gradients.")
The judges are tired of the same sci-fi tropes.
Give them something that feels real and engaging and …human.
AI Aesthetic, featuring SmplCo MD (and article author), Andreas
Dry Run Your Prompts
Here is the dirty secret of AI development: AI sucks at iterating.
If you are tweaking your system prompts during the hackathon, you are wasting time.
(By 'system prompts', we mean the foundational instructions that lay down the general rules for how your AI operates.)
AI is a powerful engine, but it needs a precise steering wheel.
Dry run your prompts beforehand.
Test them until they deliver exactly what you envision, every single time.
When the pressure is on, you need reliable outputs, not hallucinations.
You could put anything in that prompt box. But you shouldn't.
The "Friend of a Friend" Test
You need feedback, but you need the right kind of feedback.
Testing on your friends is OK, but they'll often be too nice. (And 'nice feedback' is the kind of feedback that ends up bankrupting you.) Same goes for testing on your family.
But the gold standard? Have your friends test it on their friends.
You need to be one step removed to get the truth.
By removing yourself from the room, you strip away the politeness filter and get the raw, honest feedback you need to pivot before the demo.
The Demo Video is Everything
You can build the greatest tech stack in the world, but if your demo video is boring, you lose.
A great video can make a broken prototype look like a finished product.
Do NOT leave the video until the last hour.
Start scripting your video early. Focus on the narrative in the context of the category, competition or judging criteria, and tell it in this order:
Show the pain / problem
Introduce the solution & its benefits
Reveal the magic of it in action
Show the delightful results
If you remember nothing else, remember to focus the benefits FIRST in your storytelling.
No one cares about your shiny thing until they know what's in it for them.
When it comes to making it, remember you're on an AI hackathon! So make AI do the work.
Below is the video we made for Get To Give, which won Lovable's SheBuilds buildathon.
For this, we used stills from Gemini’s Nano Banana, motion by Midjourney, and added a voice over using ElevenLabs.
Good luck!
