definitely a hot

definitely a hot but winning hackathons is not hard. hackathons and losing, if you find yourself attending hackathons and losing, guarantee you're spending way too much time coding and overlooking three key characteristics that all winning projects have. My credibility on the subject is that I've won or placed in every single hackathon I've ever attended, netting thousands at universities like Harvard, I'm gonna give a 24 hour breakdown of what you should prioritize that you always walk away with some prize money. HOURS 1-4: You focus on key characteristic number one, the idea. The biggest mistake new teams make is that they chat for 10 to 20 minutes about a project, settle on the first decent idea, and immediately start coding. Do not do this. Your idea is arguably the most important aspect of your success, so you should brainstorm religiously. Be hypercritical of the idea and its validity. If you think you've come up with something good, try to go validate the idea with one of the panel judges. You guys are. This iterative process will allow you to zero in on the problems that actually need solved. Spend the extra idea. HOURS 4-16: This is where you work on key characteristic No. two, the user journey. You have to understand that hackathons are basically glorified pitch competitions, that you have ready product by the 24 hours. What you really is a clear user journey. What is the core flow and how does the application solve a specific problem? Good rule of thumb is that if you aren't planning on showing the app in your technical demo, it does not matter. HOURS 16-24: This brings me to 24 in the third core characteristic, the presentation. Let me say this plainly. It does not matter what you build if you can't clearly communicate how it solves a problem. Time and time again with awesome projects fail to clearly present why their idea matters. Despite having far technically superior projects, they lose to a team that can clearly communicate why they should care. Presentation matters so much more than you think. Now that you got all the secrets, there's only one thing left to do. Sign up for a hackathon, build something cool, some money. I'll see you tomorrow.