Top – Let Me Hack, University of Sabaragamuwa ( Source : ReadMe – 2018), Sri Lanka; Bottom – Ooreedoo Hack, Maldives (Source: Ooreedoo – 2018).

Disclaimer: This blog reflects my personal opinions and does not represent those of my employer.

Who should read this? If you are a marketer or tech leader planning to run or sponsor a hackathon to drive product adoption, increase usage, or collect high-quality developer feedback, this is for you.

The background

Randika Vishman introduced me to hackathons and we organized our first in 2012.   Since then I’ve organized or advised for over 30 hackathons, both locally and internationally with budgets of a couple of hundred thousand dollars. 

Hackathons give a focused timeblocks for most developers to build stuff that they think that matters. These get organized in the form of an event, bringing people, resources, rewards and structure. This is a fun way to engage developers, a lot of high energy that drives developers to try products and give feedback. In some cases, 

Developers loved it too. Networking, exposure, prizes, swags, funding and more. There were regular teams. In fact, some companies even had dedicated teams that competed in hackathons as a core part of their job KPIs.

Over the last decade, formats generally fell into three buckets:

1. Open to the public (anyone can apply).
2. Internal corporate hackathons (driving digital transformation).
3. Invitation-only events.

Tech Crunch Disrupt (TCD), AngelHack and a few others attracted developers, entrepreneurs and VCs. Twitter, Carousell, Zapier are a few big names in tech who built their first prototype at different hackathons. I remember Nayana Samaranayake built and pitched his idea at TCD, Storylize and an app to share pictures are stories even before stories were a thing. 

In 2014 I wrote a blog about how to organize a hackathon that was widely used and made me the go to person for the company that I was working for at that time. After a while I stopped getting involved in hackathons. 

Why I walked away

I loved doing hackathons. Developers loved it. Companies loved it too. So what’s the problem? 

One evening while dipping a Marie Biscuit in a tea I was thinking, am I getting the real return on investment (ROI) by investing in these hackathons? A few uncomfortable questions came to mind:

• Are developers using my product after the hackathon? 
• Am I using the product feedback I got back to the product roadmap? 
• Did I manage to capture real feedback? 
• Am I only doing this for the PR and good vibes? 
• I spent 100k to get 100 people using my product, was it worth it? 
• What happens to the stuff built after the hackathon?   
• The brave few who took their product forward and built a business they are going to impact my next quarter revenue? 

Half of Marie biscuit had fallen into the tea when I came out from zoning out 🍪.

I analyzed the full value chain and I realized it was no point investing any more. 

I wasn’t alone; others noticed similar patterns, and the intensity of the hackathon trend began to decline.

The Current Landscape: AI and PLG

AI products are booming. As more AI developer tools products / services companies exponentially grow, the need to get in front of developers as soon as possible. Show what differentiations they have, drive adoption and potentially build an advocate base. 

I really like this strategy of Product Led Growth (PLG). Solve real problems of the customers and let the product speak for itself. Developers are savvy people. They don’t have an appetite for sales / marketing fluff. They need the real deal. They read the documentations, they try things, build things, break things and see how a product can solve their problem. This is where product experience should be at its core of dev tools. 

Source – Productled.com 

Hackathons are a good old engagement vehicle. So this rising demand is leading to hosting more hackathons. Get developers to try their products and services but hackathons should be able to align with PLGs needs.

There are companies with deeper pockets but they lack the “bandwidth” to host these experiences. This has created a massive market for platforms like DevPost, Agorize, and AngelHack to run events on their behalf. 

Cost per token is reducing but it’s still quite expensive to run AI workloads. AI space is evolving at a phase we’ve never seen before. Marketshare is an infinite game but companies love to be in the radar. That puts pressure on product, product marketing, sales, developer experience and others, translating that pressure as high expectations from a hackathon. 

What am I going to do? 

Hackathons are good but the older models aren’t the most effective way to drive product led growth and product usage in my opinion if that’s your ultimate objective. If your product isn’t picking up, there is something you need to fix without spraying and praying for money at a hackathon.  It’s good to be in space but with the right balance. There are some really interesting tactics that are emerging and I believe the most effective are 1:few developer engagements. 

I am currently studying how modern hackathons function and developing frameworks to make them more effective. Will I be involved in hackathons again? Yes—but I will be experimenting with different models. The world has changed, and developer behavior has changed with it.

On a personal note, I’m planning to organize a different kind of a hackathon in Sri Lanka this year in a personal capacity to help pro developers focus, build their products and take them to market. More details on that later. 

Hackathons are back. Developers, it’s time to giddy up!