https://supabase.com/blog/ai-hackathon-at-y-combinator
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This guide is what has worked for us, how we won the YC × Supabase AI Hackathon, and what we WISH we knew before competing in our first hackathon.
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Advice from the Soshi co-founders
*“Think about your intention before you ‘compete’.
Why are you attending this hackathon?
Mike and I have gone to many hackathons: to learn, to win, to meet people, or just to vibe and eat free food. You don’t need to compete to win at every hackathon you attend. Sometimes taking the time to learn a new skill means ‘losing’ now, but I promise it pays off in the long run.”* - Elijah Muraoka
“Keep your ears peeled for when they announce meals. Don’t get too locked in. No feeling is worse than missing a free hackathon meal.” - Michael Long
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Come to the hackathon with an idea already in mind. It’s even better if you can come into the hackathon with a friend or two as well.
If you really want to win, we recommend even outlining your tech stack and implementation strategy so that you’re ready to start writing code immediately.
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Maximize your chances of success by minimizing your time spent NOT building
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If you can cut out time spent on
we believe your odds will greatly improve.
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We recommend first designing your UI and outlining your ideal flow for your demo. Next, determine how you will structure your data models and API contracts. Finally, integrate everything and ship one perfect feature flow — one great feature is better than five broken ones!
Coding is obviously very important — and still the most important thing — but don’t make it the whole thing.
Hackathons are one of the best environments to meet like-minded people who you could really bond with, work with, and make meaningful connections with.
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You’ll never know who you could meet unless you’re willing to step outside your comfort zone and go talk to people
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