# How to win a Hackathon - 1

> Solve a problem.
> 

I’ve judged probably hundreds and hundreds of project by now. It is always clear which one stands out. There are various ways to go about winning a hackathon. It also depends on your goal. In this article I’m going to talk about how to win a hackathon and that is by solving a problem.

## The goal

Im going to assume you want to build a winning project and a specific goal you might have is:

> I want win the hackathon and build a product.
> 

You don’t know what you want to build, but you want to build an app that real consumers can use. Get to the Main Stage, win a prize and hey…maybe eventually raise on the project. It’s possible. Let’s assume that’s what you want to do.

## Basic rules

> There are some basic rules you need to stick to if you want to win.
> 

********Solve a real problem********

If you want your project to stand out, make sure you’re providing **********value**********. One way to do that, is to actually solve a problem. In the next section we dive deeper in to this.

******************************Time is ticking******************************

You’re on the clock. It’s a hackathon project. Stick to your scope. Naturally you got this idea that has a billion features. Pick 1, stick to it. One working flow is way better than 10 unfinished ones. You need to hack something together, you’re not expected to build out a full product.

**********************Clear pitch**********************

You’re deck and description is super important. Can’t be too long, can’t be unclear. Often I read a project description and it’s unclear what the value is. Your description needs to be super clear and not a book work. Your first paragraph is the most important one. The first 5 lines should tell me enough.
Your deck should be no more than 5 slides: ********************************************Problem, Solution, Magic(tech used), Demo, Future Roadmap.******************************************** THAT’S IT, and don’t have 6 bullet points per slide. Short & sweet, clear sentences, that explain the topic of each slide.

Remember, judges have to judge somewhere between 30-80 projects in a very limited time. And if you got bad luck and you’re project number 79, well, chances are the judge doesn’t have that much patience left. Just real talk.

## From problem to solution

Projects that stood out, solved a problem, an actual problem. The example I will be giving doesn’t have anything to do with web3. The next time I will give a web3 example.

### Example

**********Problem & Solution**********

> Decline in mental health for all sorts of reasons, is occurring more and more.
> 

That’s a real problem. Now if you’re suffering from mental health issues obviously you need to seek professional support. However there are other methods to help. Like journalling. Journalling is a proven method to help battle a decline in mental health.

**************The App**************

Ok, we have a problem and a solution. What do we build?

Well we could build an app that incentives you to journal daily through a conversation with an AI powered therapist.

**********Functionality**********

Next we need to map out what the app ********does********. Think from the perspective of the user, how does the user flow look like. Then make a list of the functionalities you need to build. Here’s a rough list.

- *Talk with AI* 
We can use OpenAI for this functionality. They have a very easy API to use. This part is basically a chat functionality, powered by OpenAI that will help us to journal.
- *Capture journals*
When we have a conversation with our therapist, we want to capture our interactions. But you want to keep your private conversations, well…private. You could opt to store it on-chain, but that might be gas-expensive. Also you would need to encrypt it with something like Litt Protocol. For this example, we can store the journals in our private Notion Page.
- *Keep track of time - a 15 minute timer*
The goal is to journal daily and making sure the user journals properly. For that purpose we’ll build in a timer that only starts when the user starts the conversation.

**************Visuals**************

Next you need to draw out some rough visuals of what the app looks like. Here are some guidelines:

1. Don’t pick colours, leave that for the end. Everything in black and white. If you have time at the end, you can add some colours, but honestly…judges care about a clean design. Nothing more clean like black and white.
2. Go to Envato and check out some templates. Search what you’re building, chatbot, dashboard, exchange. Whatever it may be.
3. If you can’t find a template, then you can find inspiration [here](https://chakra-templates.dev/). This is a Chakra template site. It has a lot of ready to use components you can plug into your code. You don’t need to use Chakra, but it can give you the right inspiration.
4. Draw out your wireframes. Again keep it simple. Go to [excalidraw](https://excalidraw.com/), create a couple of rectangles and draw a couple of boxes inside the rectangle. 
Pen and paper works too btw.

![wireframe](/images/posts/hackathon1/Screenshot_2023-06-14_at_19.03.58.png)
    

************DEPLOY************

Deploying your project, is probably the best way to showcase it. If a judge read the description, thought it was cool project and then heads over the app and experiences the **********magic**********. Well that’s a winning project right there.

If you’re looking for inspiration, [here](https://github.com/razacodespython/buddy) is something that I build in a couple of hours to illustrate the above pointers. This was done on my own. If you have a team and you have a plan, you can work ********very******** efficiently and cover quite a bit of ground.

## Technical dept

This article is a starter to give you pointers on how to win. Something that I didn’t highlight enough is probably the technical dept of a project. There have been projects that had a poor design and front-end. However they utilised a library like ******************************SnarkJS or Noir****************************** and used applied Zero Knowledge to build out an idea. ********That******** stands out. So the exception to the rule of basics in visuals, is if the technical capability of your project stands out.

## Conclusion

There are more ways to win a hackathon than outlined in this article. To be fair, if you’re bounty hunting, your strategy might be slightly different. There are still pointers to be taken:

- Scope out an idea and stick to a plan.
- You’re on the clock, just hack something together with minimal design.
- Goal is an MVP/POC, not a full functional product.
- Clear story explaining your project.