Back to writing
November 20254 min read
What Hackathons Taught Me About Shipping AI Products
Fast constraints, rough prototypes, and the difference between a cool demo and a durable product idea.
StartupsExperimentsProduct Thinking
Hackathons are useful because they collapse decision-making. You find out quickly what matters, what breaks, and what was just performance.
The best lesson is that shipping fast is not the same thing as thinking clearly. The teams that stand out usually have a much sharper model of the user problem than the teams with the most flashy demos.
I keep returning to hackathon projects because they are compressed versions of real product decisions. They expose taste.