Backend Developers on Hackathons Are Not Needed

A few years back, when people had more interactions and live events, I’ve participated in various hackathons as a participant and mentor.

In this short post, I want to share one insight from these good ol’ times. Might be helpful if you are interested in participating in some hackathons soon.

Backend developers on hackathons are not needed ¶

You’ve heard that right. The main goal of the startup hackathons (or any other) is to validate the idea in a limited time that the product you build is needed by the people in the room.

These someones are business people, future clients, jury on the hackathon. They don’t care how your backend works if the hackathon was not sponsored by some cloud provider. They want to touch, to see, feel the idea in the real life.

That’s why the perfect team for a hackathon would be:

• People with vision who understand the idea and can nicely describe it, present and sell
• (maybe) UI developer to create a clickable prototype
• Designers, who will be able to create the first view of the product with help of Figma or other tools

And that’s all.

If you were able to show the idea, it looks sexy and everybody is nodding — you won.