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How-To'sHow to Win a Hackathon: Notes From the Judging Table
At the JetBrains x Codex Hackathon, I spent two days watching teams build and then pitch their projects. The thing that decided most of the winners wasn’t just the previous twenty-four hours of work. It was the few minutes they spent presenting it. A strong project with a confusing demo loses to a simpler project that the judges understand.
So, I asked a handful of the judges what separates a hackathon pitch that wins from one that gets forgotten by the next presentation. Their answers lined up almost perfectly. Here’s what they told me, plus a few things I’ve picked up judging these myself.
