45 Tips To Increase Your Chances of Winning Top Prizes At A Hackathon

So, you joined a hackathon? Are you looking for tips to win prizes at a hackathon? I have joined a total of 12 hackathons since Sept 2022, I have made $4,263 from 4 out 7 of my last project submissions. I will be sharing my general tips based on what worked best for me. Welcome onboard!

I was a top 10 finalist in my 2nd submission, at this point I only had 10 months of coding experience, no CS Degree, and Python was the only programming language on my belt. A junior developer with by all means, I guess you can trust my hacker's tips.

Assuming you plan to follow most of these tips, my hope is you will learn to rely on your gut instincts when picking a bounty. You don't have to make a compelling case why you are going to win, just start hacking when the hackathon kicks off.

My target audience for the reader:

If you want to win 1st or 2nd prizes
If you want to be a top 10 finalist
If you have less than 48 hours, usually a weekend
If you have 2 - 4 weeks
If you have no project idea
If this is your first hackathon
If you are solo, or have no team
If you are not a front-end developer
If you code in one programming language
If you are not a programmer i.e designer or marketer
If you already have an idea
If you already have a team

Pre Hackathon

I will first share my general assumptions, and then other topics will be based on common situations depending on the nature of most hackathons I have attended

Pre-hackathon assumptions:

You have been actively gaining new skills for the past 6 months, and you have proof from your activity is on github
You know the hackathon start date and end date and are aware of all major deadlines or extensions
You have successfully registered for the hackathon and know where to find all scheduled talks or workshops
If you have a project idea before the hackathon starts, you are flexible and willing to change it if your idea does not fit the rules, or won't qualify for sponsored bounties and prize pools
You had no project idea before the hackathon, but you are willing to adapt i.e can pick up new tools, and even learn a new programming language if you have to (good attitude)

Pay special attention the first assumption

If you have not been actively learning new skills i.e domain specific skills in blockchain, product design, web development etc. I find it hard to believe you will have the ability to keep up with the pace of the hackathon. Unless, you are highly skilled, and determined win. Hackathons have an abnormally high pace for a learning environment. It helps if this is your cup of tea. All the best.

Hacker Tips

💡

The bare minimum is that you must follow the rules of the hackathon. You have to make the most out of your experience without being disqualified. Ok?

📜 My Tips:

Read the rules of the hackathon and follow them
Attend all talks, sign up even if you have no clue what will be talked about
Join the live sessions on zoom, conferences etc., do not rely on watching recorded talks, unless the video is a tutorial, never miss the chance to attend live
Always prepare a written bio, use this to introduce yourself to other hackers
Be prepared to record a live demo of which you are talking about your idea, talk even if english is not your first language, you'd be surprized how multilingual hackathons are
If you don't plan on doing a live demo, prioritize organizing your project repo and documentation, this also includes your project name, description, and all other required submission details, you must, there is no other way
Prioritize creating a project that is ready to run on other machines besides yours, if you must use an environment share the process of how to set up an environment
As soon and you discover one thing running successfully, immediately document the steps you took to reproduce it, save all commands you used, and always overdeliver on your documentation, whether you put it in readme, or docs
If an action takes multiple steps to set up, create a script to run all those steps together, you need that if you want to move quickly
Save your work often and don't hesitate to start a fresh repo if you have to, sometimes you might make complex decisions, and unable to retrace your steps, start over, don't wait until it's too late
If you can write tests write them, they may not seem important, but I guarantee this will only improve the quality of your submission
If you can throw errors throw them, if you can log states log them, God forbid you have to fix code during a live demo, don't thank me, thank your logs, when code is breaking during a live presentation, logs will you give you confidence, not embarrassment
Allow yourself to build with simplicity in mind over complexity, don't add a commit with 50,000 lines of code, slow down, this is unacceptable
Focus on project functionality, to win anything your project has to work
If you are not a UI/UX designer, leave that role for a designer, product engineer, or a front-end developer who is familiar with that domain, unless it is completely necessary, which I doubt you do
If you attend a live workshop, code along, don't just sit through the session, learn by doing
Ask developer advocates for project ideas, even if you already have one
If you want to be a top 10 finalist, watch previous hackathon finalist demos, at bare minimum, perform twice as good as a benchmark
If you want to win 1st or 2nd prizes, pick a bounty prize you are confident to exceed its expectations
Do not pick a bounty only by looking at the dollar amount, don't do that, if want to apply for multiple bounties, ensure that at least 50% of your project depends on that technology if not 100%
Get clarification on what the sponsor claims is a requirement to qualify for a prize, whenever you select a bounty always confirm with the team, ask them if your idea fits within the minimum expectations to rank for top prizes
Take advantage of the access you have over the sponsor's developer relations staff, connect with developer advocates, sometimes they can share necessary information to influence your choice of bounties and increase your chances
Start working on a project right away, if you are still undecided, start anyway, this will allow your mind to cascade into positive decisions that will assert your intentions hack, make commits as soon as you realize you can can pull this off
Don't spend a lot of time brainstorming, focus on developing a creative flow, make micro commits to help you achieve healthy creativity rhythms, brainstorm only on the bounty, not your ideas
Share your first working demo with the sponsor team, if it's is allowed, send an email, DM, get project feedback, you'll feel confident once you realize the person giving you advice is same person who wrote the libraries you use as project dependencies
If you don't have a demo within 24hrs, get help, start sharing those bugs, what bottleneck is preventing you from having a working demo?
The more bugs you share publicly, the more blessings you get, hackathons have a high ratio of smart people in attendance, use other hackers as a free resource to troubleshoot your bugs, for free
Judge the reactions of people when you talk about your idea, did someone want to contact you afterwards? (good sign) Take note if you see no reactions
If you get negative responses (better than no response), don't worry, this is usually a good sign – you will not be judged based on your idea being good or bad, project judging is is weighted in comparison other submissions, bad ideas win all the time, I will explain why my next law of winning top prizes
Ask for suggestions, even if you already made up your mind on an idea
You must always be on the look out for bounties other hackers are eyeing the most, evaluate your ability to overdeliver in that bounty category, sketch out a SWOT analysis if you have to, prize hunting will require you to know your competition, you want to choose a sponsor prize that you believe you have an unfair advantage to dominate, you see little, or no competition. Don't waste your time on bounties with unnecessary levels of competition, unless you are the big fish
If you unfortunately chose a bounty where other hackers are more competitive, stay skeptical, you can play it safe by choosing a less competitive bounty to increase your probability of hitting the 1st or 2nd prize, however, don't be scared to play, sometimes those hackers will bust and fail to submit their final project
If you have a less than 48 hours to submit a project, take a moment to look at the submission form and review what you will need to complete it, is it a video, google slides? avoid using your last hours prioritizing development mode, one bug can easily eat up all your available time, the trick is to submit your project first, then fix critical bugs with left over time, or after the deadline
Always trust your ability to build everything from scratch, if possible use no other libraries except the one that qualifies you for your bounty, for anything else think twice before you decided on another external library dependency for your hackathon project
Build your prototypes in minimal HTML, CSS and Node before switching to a javascript framework. Avoid using frameworks unless you really need them, Nextjs and react make changes to their apis so frequently so if you can't keep up with major updates, don't shoot yourself on the foot, depend on libraries you know well
Use programming languages you are familiar with, obviously, however, I highly encourage you to try a new programming language, or tool, shoot for the moon and ignore anyone that tells you to not to try a learn programming language during a hackathon, it might be the thing that makes your project unique, break away from the normies
If you are solo, or have no team, there's a saying that goes, "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together", if you are short on time, don't be afraid to work alone, however, in general, in a group of two, you have a high chance of outperforming any solo hacker, you have double the time, a solo hacker with the same capabilities needs an all nighter to accomplish half the work
If you have no frontend skills, build other parts of your project, no need to worry about frontend, this is not a UI hackathon so don't bother, be creative with the skills you already have
If you only know 1 programming language, python, find sponsors that have working implementations in the language you are most familiar with, see if you can contribute to that project, or extent it's implementation, don't forget to ask if your work will be in the scope any sponsor prizes
If you are not a developer, share your bio so others can know what you do
If you are not a developer, attend all workshops looking for sponsor prizes within your abilities, don't be intimidated by technical jargon
If you are not a programmer, e.g. artists, designers etc, please share your work and creative thoughts, you will be surprized how far your creativity will take you, use your power to attract programmers to your ideas
Always join brainstorming sessions and team formation sessions, allow yourself to network, meet other hackers, you probably share a lot in common than you think
If you have a team, take charge, don't be afraid to do some heavy lifting when you realize other team members are not committed as you, set early expectations by making sure you will be credited for your contributions
If your team has other technical members, bridge the gap by taking advantage of pair programming to communicate, see how farther you will take the project together, a good way to collaborate, try it!

Thank you

Do you know other readers who will find this content useful? Copy the link and share this with them. Discuss your hacking experiences and if there is something you feel I did not mention, but is worth talking about, please feel free to share your thoughts with me.

Go win some bounties.