Hackathons are group projects with worse sleep

I've done enough hackathons to have opinions. One first place, one third, and a few where we just survived

What actually decides it

The demo. Judges see your project for maybe four minutes. A working demo of one feature beats a broken demo of ten. We shipped Budgetly's MVP in 36 hours by cutting everything that wasn't on the demo path

Use the boring tech you already know. A hackathon is not the time to learn a new framework at 3am

Someone has to own the story: what's the problem, who has it, why should anyone care. That person matters as much as whoever writes the most code

Around hour 30 everyone's code gets worse and nobody notices

I'd still do another one