My Journey Through Hackathons (~₹4L)

Manan Singhal Posted on May 30 My Journey Through Hackathons (~₹4L) # web3 # blockchain # hackathon # computerscience I started participating in hackathons during my first year of college. At that time, I had very little idea about how hackathons actually worked. I just knew that people were building interesting things, networking with smart developers, and sometimes even winning prize money. That sounded exciting enough for me to start. Since then, I’ve participated in around 14 hackathons, as far as I can remember. In the beginning, I lost almost every single one. And honestly, losing repeatedly was frustrating. I would spend days building projects, staying awake till late night, submitting demos with high expectations — and then see other teams win while my project got ignored. At one point, I started questioning whether I was even good enough for hackathons. I remember asking seniors and experienced builders for advice. Most of them said similar things, but one line stayed with me: “Keep building. Don’t overthink.” Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode At first, it sounded too simple. But over time, I realized that consistency matters much more than motivation in hackathons. What I Was Doing Wrong Initially When I look back, I made a lot of beginner mistakes: I focused too much on flashy ideas instead of solving real problems. I underestimated the importance of research. I spent too much time overthinking tech stacks instead of actually building. Sometimes I copied trends without understanding the underlying problem deeply. -I thought hackathons were only about coding fast. But hackathons are much more than that. Good hackathons reward: problem-solving, originality, execution, storytelling, and product thinking. Once I understood that, my approach completely changed. The Turning Point After losing multiple hackathons, I decided to become much more intentional. I started actively searching for every live hackathon I could find, especially in Web3. I explored