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What I've learned from 50+ hackathons (36+ wins) and from judging LA Hacks. Some posts are for your first hackathon, and some assume you've done a few.

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Short, specific strategies on building and pitching, from 36+ hackathon wins.

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Oct 2, 20265 min readUpdated Oct 2, 2026
How I Fine-Tune LLMs at Hackathons on Rented Cloud GPUs
How I fine-tune LLMs at hackathons: rent an A100 or H100 on Vast.ai by the hour, then let an AI agent set up, watch, and debug the machine while you build.
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Jun 24, 20264 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
What to Do After a Hackathon: Ship 5 Assets That Get You Hired
My first internship came from one LinkedIn post about a hackathon we didn't win. What to do after a hackathon: five linked assets, four written by AI skills.
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Apr 30, 20266 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
9 Hackathon Pitch Mistakes I Saw at LA Hacks
Judging LA Hacks, I watched good projects lose points to hackathon pitch mistakes. The one almost every team made was leaving the judges no time for Q&A.
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Apr 21, 20265 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
How to Build with ElevenLabs and Cursor at a Hackathon
My loop for a voice AI hackathon project: write the PRD first, connect ElevenLabs to Cursor through MCP, then have the agent write each test before the feature.
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Apr 12, 20263 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
Non-Coders Winning Hackathons: What Domain Experts Bring
A personal injury lawyer took 1st at Anthropic's hackathon without writing code. What that says about non-coders winning hackathons, and where coding helps.
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Apr 10, 20263 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
Hackathon Pitch Guide: How to Present Your Project and Win Prizes
A hackathon pitch guide with one 3-minute structure: problem, live demo, how it works, and impact. Plus Q&A prep, and how to cut it down for a shorter slot.
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Apr 8, 20264 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
Hackathon Tips for Beginners: Your First Hackathon Survival Guide
You don't need an idea or a team to go to your first hackathon. These hackathon tips for beginners cover what to set up at home and how to spend the 24 hours.
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Apr 5, 20264 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
Best Tech Stack for Hackathons in 2026: Tools That Win Prizes
The best tech stack for hackathons is the one your team already knows. If you don't have one yet, this is the Next.js, FastAPI, and Supabase default I use.
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Apr 1, 20264 min readUpdated Sep 14, 2026
How to Win Hackathons: A Complete Guide from 36+ Victories
How to win hackathons, in the seven phases I learned across 50+ events and 36+ wins: from picking your team to following up with people after judging ends.
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