Demo day is where most student projects go to die. The demo works, the applause happens, and the deploy quietly expires three weeks later when the free tier does. Of everything I have built, the projects that mattered — Annapurna after BYTEBATTLE, SCULT Studio, the AI apps — were the ones that survived the day after. Here is what kept them alive.
One real user before demo day
A project with a user has a reason to exist on Monday. Find one person — a classmate, a club, a shopkeeper — who will use it and complain. Their complaints are your roadmap; see after the hackathon.
A deploy that stays up
A host you will still be able to afford next semester, with the memory budget written down.
