Hackathons 101?—?an opportunity for exponential growth and learning

Having participated in a few hackathons and having organized seven in the last year, I experienced what can only be described as growth at lightspeed. In under two days, I saw individuals who had never before met or worked together form teams and build working prototypes that had the potential to change their industry. But how exactly are these events fostering growth?

Curious to see how veterans in the startup space viewed hackathons and their potential for growth, I reached out to experts to get their POV.

“I strongly recommend my employees participate in hackathons. They are one of the best opportunities for rapid learning and personal growth.” — Biman Liyanage; Co-founder Wonder Technology, Serial Entrepreneur

Review: Hackathons in a Nutshell

Hackathons are events where dreams and ideas are united together. They are intense, typically lasting between 8 and 48 hours in which people come together to engage in programming and prototyping. The key goal of a hackathon is to create a functioning software or hardware product by the end of the event. In this article, you learn my thoughts on why you should participate in a hackathon or have your organization host an internal hackathon to foster learning and collaboration.

How Hackathons Help You Grow:

We reached out to past attendees and founders of startups that were created at a hackathon to get their experience and best tips for growth opportunities at hackathons.

1. You will learn to work under pressure by only having limited time.
2. You improve your communication skills. You constantly talk to your teammates, mentors, and sponsors. Teams are diverse in terms of personality types, background, introverts, and extroverts. Pro tip: pay attention to how your team is doing and ask others how they are doing. You will pick up clues to what’s going on around you which can help you to improve.
3. Expand your comfort zone — testing a new idea or newly acquired skill and pitching in front of hundreds of people, through which you will also become more confident.
4. Network — Increase and deepen your networks which can build opportunities. Besides coders you meet, network with designers, entrepreneurs, people with wild ideas, investors, experienced mentors, and other industry veterans. You might find your co-founder there. Even most people who describe themselves as shy enjoy being around others at hackathons: “I’ve never met someone I regret meeting at a hack!”
5. At hackathons, you can meet some of the most impressive talents. When asking them about their portfolios, often the answer is that a lot has been created at hackathons. Even if your hackathon project doesn’t win the hackathon or changes the world, consider it a valuable addition to your portfolio.
6. “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”, said Henry Ford. Teamwork is an elementary part of a hackathon. Developers share codebases, work with designers & entrepreneurs and have to help each other out with subtasks running against deadlines. Even in stressful situations, teams have to overcome obstacles, find and build solutions to problems.
7. Competing in everyday life, nearly every day in school or at work makes many feel that they are not good enough. Hackathons can be a confidence booster and prove that YOU are good enough! No matter if you’re a front- or backend developer, designer, ideator or entrepreneur — there is a role for everybody in hackathon teams. Even with limited expertise in a field, one will massively learn from team members, participants, and mentors (and trust me, even the most skilled coders will google for solutions and best practices when facing problems).

Testimonials from participants, startup founders and hackathon veterans:

“ Hackathons put you outside of your comfort zone and often make you learn skills that you might not otherwise learn.”  Zeke Depas, Founder — The Code Club

“… during the intense 36-hours, we finished my first hackathon with a demo app to prevent food waste. I still remembered the surreal feeling of pitching this idea in front of 300 students & faculty in my college. How  empowering I felt to see my idea on paper coming into life after a weekend of  hard work and collaboration! The hackathon has  taught me to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.”  Jasmine Nguyen, Regional Manager APAC — AngelHack

“…  provides a safe environment for people who want to make a change to test their ideas with minimum fear of failure and I believe that’s the most important ingredient of innovation.”  Ke (Linka) Lin — UNDP

“A hackathon is the right place to  build the right solution for the pressing problems in this world!”  Harish Kotra, Regional Manager India — AngelHack

“The AngelHack Hackathon was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It wasn’t about winning, and it wasn’t about starting my own company: those were just cool by-products. It was about seeing that in two days, in the right community, with the right people, it was possible to build something incredible, that would actually make a difference.”  Alex Olthoff, OnPoint — CTO & Co-founder (previously founder of Spaceable)

Besides learning tons, hackathon participants also have a great time!

Looking to embrace life-long learning and accelerate your personal and professional growth? Here’s how you can get started:

Join AngelHack during our #AH12 Global Hackathon Series and unlock your true potential as an ideator, a coding specialist, or a UI/UX designer.

Find our in-person AngelHack hackathons here.

Or join our #virtual #hackathon here.

Our AngelHack team and awesome Shanghai judges #AH2018

About me: 

Jonas Wolf（郎伟) is a global citizen, having lived and worked in 5 countries. He is passionate about the power of community, ideas and technology to solve problems and improve the lives of billions. An entrepreneur at heart, Jonas started his first job age 13, launched a business while in university and worked with naked Hub until its acquisition by WeWork. He leads the AngelHack APAC team helping companies to innovate and to empowers code and change makers through hackathons, workshops and innovation consulting. We love to connect and to build lasting partnerships.